The document announces WordCamp Toronto 2015 on October 3-4 at Humber College Lakeshore Campus. It then provides an overview of managed WordPress hosting by Alex Sirota of NewPath Consulting, including common issues that managed hosting addresses and examples of hosting options like GoDaddy, DreamHost, Flywheel, WP Engine, and Pantheon.

1. WordCamp Toronto 2015
Oct 3-4 - Humber College Lakeshore Campus
Alex Sirota, Director, NewPath Consulting
www.newpathconsulting.com
@alexsirota
Managed WordPress Demystified
Insights from a Worldwide Survey of Managed WordPress Hosts

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3. Why care about hosting?
• Boring, no?
• So much choice and variety in 2015, need to be informed
• Hosting partner critical for your sanity and your
customer’s satisfaction: 2-4s maximum load times...
• And can make your WordPress configuration and
development much safer, friendlier and FUN!
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5. Story 1: December Hack
• Customer on shared hosting at large Canadian host,
WordPress installed with default “admin” username, core not
upgraded in months.
Solution: Restore from recent backup + Security baked into
hosting
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6. Story 2: WordPress Migration ≠ Good Times
• Hacked site needs to be moved over QUICKLY as per
customer demand.
Solution: Migration services with a 1-click migrate
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8. Story 3: The dreaded “white screen of death”
• You updated some theme/plugin code, and BOOM!
Solution: Use a workflow to promote changes tested in
staging environment, then promote to production
automatically. Rollback production if required.
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9. A picture explains the differences...
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Build your own car ($-$$)
Public transit ($)
Uber for Hosting ($$-$$$$)
Host specific implementation

10. WordPress Hosting Options
Shared
GoDaddy Hosting
1and1
BlueHost
DreamHost
Hostgator
Thousands more
Virtual Private Server
Many major shared hosts
offer VPS options
Digital Ocean
Amazon Web Services
Linode
100s more
Managed WordPress
20+ options available
today (⅓+ of managed
WordPress Hosts are shared
hosts as well)
Really just a marketing
term
We will look closer at 5
hosts, all quite different
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11. Deep dive on the term “Managed WordPress”
Cost + Support
Different customers
(SMBs, Agencies,
Development
shops)
Support varies from
light configuration to
development
Very competitive
market - you do get
what you pay for!
Architecture
Architecture affects:
Level of caching and
optimization
Workflow
Security
Great custom UI make
complex processes user
friendly. No cpanel!
Bells & Whistles
Migration Support
(free to fantastick!)
Pre-packaged
proprietary plugins
and themes (e.g.
Genesis comes free
with WebSynthesis,
5-minute quickstart
on GoDaddy Pro)
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12. No more of this...
10 Easy Steps for your cloning and WordPress migration:
1. Download the plugin wp-db-backup.
2. Upload this plugin to your current server. Go to the
‘Plugins’ menu to activate it.
3. Proceed to the menu ‘Manage‘ -> ‘Backup‘. Select all
your tables, and click on ‘Backup’ so you can
download the gzip file onto your computer.
4. Extract the gzip file you’ve downloaded. There now
should be a sql file. This file contains your
WordPress database. In the next steps, we will put
this database into new server.
5. Create a MySql Database and user for your blog in
the new hosting account. This is explained in detail
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13. Fantastic Five:
5 very different approaches
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14. GoDaddy
Managed
WordPress
Cheap ‘n Cheerful
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15. Go Pro with GoDaddy
• Super user-friendly including automatic migration from
most WordPress installations, simple DNS configuration
• GoDaddy Pro is a free membership program for
freelancers that provides exclusive tools and support.
• Staging -> production deployment for a complex
WordPress site can be finicky
• WordCamp Toronto 2015 sponsor!
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16. Simple migration user interface...
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18. GoDaddy Pro Monitoring Dashboard with SMS/Email Alerts
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19. DreamPress 2
from
DreamHost
Speed and Flexibility ‘R Us
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20. DreamHost (shared) to DreamPress (managed)
• 2 VPSs for each domain (application server and MySQL
server), no “secret” sauce, Varnish and HHVM
• Regularly contact plug-in authors that don’t “play nice”,
but don’t restrict plugins (see wiki),
• Wiki on DreamPress 2 has tech details, detailed FAQs
• DreamHost to DreamPress upgrade
• WordCamp Toronto 2015 Sponsor! 20

21. Customers love DreamHost
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22. Pretty sweet domain name chooser on signup - all gTLDs
represented to choose a new domain quickly
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23. FlyWheel
Agency Friendly +
Team Oriented
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24. FlyWheel Awesomeness
• Simple collaboration for agencies and customers
https://getflywheel.com/why-flywheel/collaboration/
• One Click Staging Environment
https://getflywheel.com/why-flywheel/staging-sites/
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25. Simplicity for complex processes
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26. Team collaboration, 1-click site cloning
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27. Built in MySQL database manager
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28. WP engine
5+ Year WordPress Pioneer
and Performance Champion
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29. WP engine - a WordPress pioneer...
• All focus on WordPress for 5+ years, co-invented term
“Managed” WordPress
• A “labs team” researches performance improvements (eg
HHVM, geoIP, Steven Word)
• In March 2015, WP engine received investment of $23M
• Team of 8-12 speak at WordCamps &
WordCamp Toronto 2015 sponsor!
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30. Backup interface - note backups before and after
WordPress core upgrades
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31. Cloning/Templating Interface
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32. Pantheon
DevOps-for-Hire
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33. Pantheon: A DevOps dream
• DevOps for organizations who cannot afford a DevOps
team, with full dev->staging->production workflow
• Uses existing Linux “container” technology (like Google
App Engine, Heroku), HHVM, Drupal, Your SLA = Largest
Customer SLA
• FREE developer websites, only pay for production
• WordPress Toronto 2015 sponsor!
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34. What could go wrong? Everything...
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From Josh Koening’s (Pantheon) “Workflow is a Dance”

35. Multidev: an innovation for DevOps
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5 things you can stop:
- “It worked on my machine.”
- Wrangling local dev tools
- Praying for scale
- Reconciling out-of-sync
development databases
- Delaying sign-off

36. Public Managed
WordPress
Survey
http://bit.ly/wpsidebyside
Survey performed February 2015
with feedback from WordPress
Hosting Group on Facebook: over
2,000 hosting experts across the
world. Join today!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/wphosting/
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37. Let’s recap...
• Hosting is a huge factor for developer sanity and
customer satisfaction
• Review Signal Performance benchmarks for 2015
• Things can go wrong, so need a great partner, here are 5
• Evaluate & make the best decision for your customers!
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38. Managed WordPress = WordPress Superhero
Thanks to http://www.wpauctions.com/ for image! 38

39. Q&A
@alexsirota
@newpathtech
(888) 781-2539
Visit
newpathconsulting.com
to find out more about
our sales, marketing and
operational fixed-fee
services.
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40. Shared Hosting (Traditional)
• Installed via control panel or manually
• Limited access and resources available (Error 500)
• You’re on your own for:
• backup/restores
• updates
• ongoing attacks
• Inexpensive
• Support for WordPress is “best effort”
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41. VPS Virtual Private Server
• Various server “images” available with WordPress
• Full “root” access
• Can expand storage, memory, # of CPUs
• You’re on your own for:
• backup/restores
• updates
• ongoing attacks
• Can be expensive with good support
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42. Managed WordPress
• Installation and environment tuned for WordPress
• Don’t have to worry about performance and scale
• No “root” access, and restriction on certain plugins
• Features include:
• Automatic backup & restore
• WordPress core auto updates and notification
• Attack detection and mitigation (DDoS)
• Development/Deployment workflow
• Caching always setup for speed-up
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