Enterprise Scale: 80+ WordPress Sites to AWS

The Challenge

• ✗Slow performance: Average page load time 4-6 seconds, impacting SEO rankings
• ✗High hosting costs: $8,000/month for limited resources on WHM
• ✗Limited scalability: Sudden traffic spikes caused site crashes
• ✗Database issues: MySQL performance degradation with growth
• ✗No disaster recovery: Single server meant total data loss risk

The Solution

We architected a scalable AWS infrastructure with EC2 auto-scaling, RDS databases, CloudFront CDN, and automated deployment pipelines. Migration completed with zero downtime using custom scripts and parallel processing.

1. AWS Infrastructure Architecture

Multi-tier architecture with load balancing, auto-scaling, and managed databases:

# AWS Architecture for WordPress

# EC2 Auto Scaling Group
resource "aws_launch_template" "wordpress" {
  name_prefix   = "wordpress-"
  image_id      = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0" # Ubuntu with WordPress
  instance_type = "t3.medium"

  vpc_security_group_ids = [aws_security_group.wordpress.id]

  user_data = base64encode(<<-EOF
    #!/bin/bash
    apt-get update
    apt-get install -y nginx php-fpm php-mysql mysql-client
    # Configure Nginx & PHP
  EOF
  )
}

# Auto Scaling Group
resource "aws_autoscaling_group" "wordpress" {
  name                = "wordpress-asg"
  launch_template {
    id      = aws_launch_template.wordpress.id
    version = "$Latest"
  }

  min_size         = 2
  max_size         = 20
  desired_capacity = 4
  vpc_zone_identifier = aws_subnet.private[*].id

  target_group_arns = [aws_lb_target_group.wordpress.arn]
}

# Application Load Balancer
resource "aws_lb" "wordpress" {
  name               = "wordpress-alb"
  internal           = false
  load_balancer_type = "application"
  security_groups    = [aws_security_group.alb.id]
  subnets            = aws_subnet.public[*].id
}

# RDS MySQL Database (Multi-AZ)
resource "aws_db_instance" "wordpress" {
  identifier     = "wordpress-db"
  engine         = "mysql"
  engine_version = "8.0"
  instance_class = "db.t3.medium"

  allocated_storage     = 500
  storage_encrypted     = true
  multi_az              = true
  backup_retention_period = 30

  skip_final_snapshot = false
  final_snapshot_identifier = "wordpress-db-final-snapshot"
}

# CloudFront CDN for Static Content
resource "aws_cloudfront_distribution" "wordpress" {
  enabled = true

  origin {
    domain_name = aws_lb.wordpress.dns_name
    origin_id   = "wordpress-alb"
  }

  default_cache_behavior {
    allowed_methods  = ["GET", "HEAD"]
    cached_methods   = ["GET", "HEAD"]
    target_origin_id = "wordpress-alb"

    forwarded_values {
      query_string = false
      cookies {
        forward = "all"
      }
    }
  }

  viewer_protocol_policy = "redirect-to-https"
}

2. Zero-Downtime Migration Strategy

Custom migration toolkit using database replication and DNS cutover:

• ✓Phase 1 (Database): MySQL master-slave replication, 80 databases synced in parallel (2 hours)
• ✓Phase 2 (Files): WordPress files synced via rsync, 200GB total (~30 minutes)
• ✓Phase 3 (DNS): Instant failover via Route53 weighted routing, 5-second TTL
• ✓Rollback Plan: 1-hour window to revert to WHM if needed

3. Performance Optimization

The Results

Technical Stack

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