WordPress multisite

#1

Based on the a few (recent) questions by this community i am seeking opinions/ advice on “best practice” to deploy a wordpres multi-site to AWS.

  1. Which do i choose - WP2Static or Static HTML Output (there is mention of SimplyStatic? and/or SimplerStatic?)

  2. Do I then create separate buckets per subdomain?
    eg mysite.com , blog.mysite.com, shop.mysite.com
    And then run my choice of static plugin per subdomain?

(after that i assume it will just be matter of managing the appropriate settings for Route 53 and CloudFront)

Thanks!

#2

Are you comfortable working from the command-line, plan to script things or prefer to manage deployments manually via the WordPress UI?

Separate buckets per subdomain keeps things relatively simple/flexible, with a separate CloudFront distribution for each.

If your live site will be the naked domain vs www, you may use an extra s3 bucket + CF distribution to handle the redirection from www to naked.

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#3

hi @leonstafford. Thanks for the quick response!

I can probably follow a tutorial for working from the command-line, but i daresay i am far from comfortable! So, in all likelihood, i will manage manually via the WordPress UI, and yes - i will be looking to have separate buckets.

i can never get a definitive answer re whether or not www vs naked is preferable right now - :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:
What is your personal preference?

#4

Does the question about my comfort levels re command-line dictate which plugin i should be using?

I assume therefore WP2Static or Static HTML Output then?

#5

Indeed - I prefer naked, but www can offer a bit more flexibility, such as more DNS hosts will support doing things with CNAMEs on www vs Alias records on the naked. There’s also some mention from some CDN providers that using the Alias type records won’t take full advantage of their network, so you could miss out on some extra performance.

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#6

Exactly. Static HTML Output today is the easier one for running via the UI and tends to “JustWork”, where WP2Static offers more flexibility, but more chance you’d need to roll sleeves up and get dirty on CLI if something doesn’t work.

Both suffer from poor documentation today, so I’d recommend you to start with Static HTML Output if it works with your sites. There’s also “SimplerStatic” as a third option, but you’d need to manually deploy the resultant site to S3, as it doesn’t have any built-in mechanism to deploy to S3/invalidate the CloudFront cache.

#7

yes - eg Cloudflare operates via www
for now i’ll stick to my usual modus operandi and do the naked domain which i am used to

at the moment i still build everything first on GCP, using their Wordpress deployment, then using their Cloud DNS.

Once i like how the site looks and is set up, i then do the static import to AWS, S3 / Cloudfront etc and then switch nameservers, detaching it from GCP

That way i can shut the VM down, but boot it up again and switch back nameservers if i want to do further work on it

it’s a bit painful i know, but for some reason, this way i am able to ensure that all links are preserved and stuff like the Progressive Web App plugins are published correctly

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#8

Sounds sane enough to me!

If you ever feel like making a video or blog post on your end to end workflow, happy to share it with people as an example.