Two of the hottest terms that often get thrown around in modern web development are ‘WordPress’ and the ‘Cloud’. Since its initial launch back in 2003, the open-source CMS has undergone numerous changes and updates to keep up with the ever-shifting landscape of the internet. One such change is the increasing importance for a website to be flexible so that it can grow organically as your business or project gains traction. Cloud hosting platforms such as Microsoft Azure fulfills this need exactly in a scalable manner.

Here is everything you should know about building a WordPress site and hosting on Microsoft Azure.

WordPress CMS

Initially launched in 2003 and designed for creating blogs. WordPress has since expanded its capabilities significantly and with close to 34% of all websites on the internet being powered by WordPress, it is undoubtedly one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) available out there.

In addition to its reliability and ease of use, WordPress is favoured for its open-source license which allows the CMS to be used and customized for free by anyone. This gives WordPress the unique advantage of having an extensive library of third-party themes and plugins that can be used to customize a website or add special functionalities, many of which are free to use.

Today, WordPress allows users to easily organize and manage content on any type of website with no programming knowledge at all, with many large and small business and governmental organizations choosing to utilize WordPress as their CMS of choice for websites.

All of this added together makes the WordPress CMS a go-to choice for the vast majority of modern website builds.

But why (and when) would one want to choose cloud-based web hosting solutions like Microsoft Azure for their brand-new WordPress site over more traditional offerings like a dedicated server?

Cloud Web Hosting and Microsoft Azure

Hosting a website on Microsoft Azure provides a number of benefits. As a cloud computing platform that provides a combination of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Azure offerings include computing, storage, networking, and AI with support for almost any operating systems, framework, and tools.

Azure allows you to scale up or down resources anytime to accommodate for spikes or drops in demand for your site with a pay-as-you-go pricing, making it more flexible and cost-effective than traditional servers for handling sites with volatile traffic rates (e.g. school sites often see sudden and significant traffic surges on snow days, while traffic is usually pretty mild on most days).

Deploying a WordPress site on Microsoft Azure is fairly simple and benefits from crucial advantages such as automatically scaling and load balancing, etc. Backups are automated and a wide range of metrics are available basically out-of-the-box.

Supported by a large fleet of data centres strategically placed around the globe, hosting on Cloud solutions like Azure offers the flexibility needed for preserving data residency (e.g. compliance with data privacy laws) and rapid scaling up for your website and business in any part of the world.

Building a WordPress site and hosting on cloud solutions such as Azure combines the best of both worlds. Offering the reliability and scalability of the cloud while being cost-effective, user-friendly, and easily customizable with the open-source WordPress CMS.