A Deep Dive into WordPress Performance: Reducing Noise Instead of Adding Horsepower
Rather than adding horsepower, reducing noise — bots, images, useless requests — proved the most effective lever on AWS WordPress.
AWS
AWS architecture lab notes: WordPress hosting, EC2, CloudFront, WAF, RDS and edge security experiments.
Experiment #4 — AWS EC2 + ALB + CloudFront + AWS WAF + Cognito
Production-grade WordPress: ALB, CloudFront VPC Origin, AWS WAF, and Cognito-gated wp-admin. Full architecture breakdown.
Experiment #3 — AWS EC2 + Cloudflare Tunnel + Cloudflare Security
Replace CloudFront with Cloudflare Tunnel + WAF. Zero-trust access, hidden origin, and trade-offs vs pure AWS.
Experiment #2 — AWS EC2 + RDS + ElastiCache
Split WordPress onto EC2 + RDS + ElastiCache. Multi-site test, performance gains, and the hidden overhead of managed services.
Experiment #1 — AWS + EC2 + CloudFront + AWS WAF
First AWS-native WordPress lab: EC2 behind CloudFront and AWS WAF. What worked, what failed, and monthly cost for a small site.
Experimenting with AWS Architectures to Host WordPress Securely and at Minimal Cost
Experiments hosting WordPress on AWS under strict constraints: maximum security, minimum cost, and minimum maintenance.