WordPress is the most powerful and the most versatile content management system. At the same time, it is the most popular CMS as well. 43% of the websites worldwide use WordPress. Its reliability, scalability, and the ability to be heavily customized are some of the many reasons it is popular among webmasters. WordPress is always up to date with current technologies and is backed by a large community of users and developers that keeps it secure. Our today’s article is about how scalable is WordPress? The short answer: A lot!
Is WordPress scalable?
Of course, how scalable is WordPress is relative since what might be easy for a small website can turn out to be difficult for a larger one? However, the flexibility of how scalable is WordPress comes from the fact that you are not stuck with your hosting provider or your server plan, so you can easily move into more advanced hosting & infrastructure solutions. If your site is currently hosted on shared hosting, you can easily move it to a cloud server or VPS hosting later if needed. You can also use WordPress Multisite feature to set up multiple sites with the same installation of WordPress.
WordPress is built on PHP and MySQL, two of the most scalable and popular web development technologies out there, so it is more scalable than Wix, Squarespace or others. PHP and MySQL combined with the benefits of WordPress make it scalable enough for big websites.
WordPress Database:
The WordPress database is based on MySQL. It can be hosted locally, on a VPS, or some cloud hosting service. MySQL is known for being scalable and secure, so WordPress benefits from this fact. MySQL databases can be easily scaled vertically or horizontally. Horizontal scaling means that you can add more servers to your database cluster. This way, it will be much easier to handle a larger amount of traffic. Vertical scaling means that, for instance, if the server cannot control the load, you should go with a bigger machine, not just upgrade your current one because it is overloaded.
WordPress benefits from the MySQL database, and it has built-in functionality to be scalable. WordPress scaling is done on a server level and can be easily done on a project level. You can scale between projects of different sizes. That means that no matter how big or small your client’s website is, you should be able to implement WordPress and scale it as much as needed. You can start working on a project with a smaller budget than expected and then move into higher budgets later. The benefits of WordPress scalability are that you’ll never overcharge your clients or underdeliver by having too little budget because you can put together any type of website.
WordPress Scalability on the Server Level:
WordPress benefits from scaling on a server level too. Server scaling is done when you move your WordPress site to a cloud hosting service or switch from a shared hosting service to a VPS or dedicated server. In any case, you will benefit from this since you can scale vertically as well as horizontally. That means that if your website starts getting more traffic, you can move it to a larger machine without downtimes and slow processing speeds.
WordPress Themes and Plugins:
You can always find or build plugins that help you scale your website if needed upon further traffic growth. WordPress’s many benefits include security, ease of use, backup options, SEO friendliness, and load time speed, among others.
WordPress benefits from the support of a big community that provides new features, WordPress plugins, and themes. You can get free and premium WordPress plugins on the official directory and a number of free themes on various websites.
WordPress uses relatively lightweight HTML, which benefits from fast loading speeds even if you have a larger page. If you ever need to optimize WordPress for speed, you can go with faster WordPress caching plugins or use a PHP cache which benefits from being much faster than a WordPress theme.
WordPress benefits from the scalability of both the server and the web development technologies it uses, so hosting it on an advanced cloud hosting service will benefit both your clients as well as yourself in the long run.
Scaling WordPress Using GeekBee.com
GeekBee offers an incredible solution to WordPress websites. It provides a dynamic hosting solution. It can preemptively sense and scale resources for your site when needed. With GeekBee, you are never forced to switch to higher-tier hosting solutions; rather, it will give your site all the resources needed to handle a traffic surge. If that surge happens to become a routine, you will get an alert to increase the number of Bees (resources) permanently, and if it is just a surge for a short time, you need not upgrade.