Business Scenario:

The following are some reasons why you might want to migrate your WordPress website to the Azure web app:

• You are developing a WordPress website that you predict will grow in size, and complexity over time and requires a highly scalable infrastructure that can grow with your website.
• WordPress website is currently hosted on a third-party hosting provider’s data center or on-premises physical machine, and you cannot upgrade hardware because of the unavailability of supported hardware in the market.
• Moving the website from one to another physical server will take longer time, effort, and cost. Also, you will face the same problem in the future.
• You would like to host (MySQL) database layer on a separate server or use PaaS service for better performance and stability.

Challenges:

• WordPress and MySQL are open-source products, and because of that, there is yet to be any official support available for migrating WordPress website data from one system to another.
• The WordPress website and MySQL database are hosted on the same server, which is a single point of failure for both services. If this server is compromised, hackers will easily access both systems.
• Migrating a WordPress website includes copying all its files and folder structure, its MySQL database, and changing the file to point to the new MySQL database. These tasks are very complicated for a large site and may require specific skills related to website configuration and MySQL database administration.
• Migrating a WordPress site to a new hosting provider or web server can be complex for any WordPress user. This is understandable since a poorly executed WordPress migration can result in downtime and dataloss.
• No out-of-the-box solutions are available in Azure to migrate a WordPress website to an Azure Web App.
• The manual migration (export and import data) method could be more user-friendly, and there are possibilities of human error and data loss.

Solution Strategy:

• After examining various methods, we discovered the All-In-One WP Migration application, which automates the migration of the MySQL database and the content of WordPress websites while supporting all third-party plugins. With this migration strategy, you can keep using the existing WordPress site.
• Create a new WordPress app using azure WordPress on Linux App Service template.
• Create a new MySQL database server on Azure for MySQL. It is a fully managed (PaaS) MySQL database service.
• Install All-in-One WP Migration Plugin on Source and destination WordPress sites.
• Install and add all extensions and plugins running on the source site.
• Install All-in-One WP Migration Plugin on Azure WebApp WordPress Website.
• Export production or existing WordPress website data from the source site
  1. Launch the WordPress Admin page and Open All-In-One WP Migration plugin.
  2. Click on the 'Export' option and specify the export type as a file.
  3. This bundles the contents of the plugins, themes, database, and media files into a single file, which can then be downloaded.
• Import WordPress website data to the destination site (Azure WebApp WordPress website).
  1. Launch the WordPress Admin page and Open All-In-One WP Migration plugin.
  2. Click on the import option on the destination site, and upload the file downloaded in the previous section.
  3. Empty the caches in the W3TC plugin (or any other caches) and validate the site's content.
• Update WordPress web-config as per azure web app environment variable strings.
• Update path and hyperlinks with new host server (Azure WebApp) information in PHP code, wp-content, and database using plugins like Search and Replace to update the database records.
• Install recommended plugins like Local Redis Cache, Azure CDN, and Azure Blob Storage
• Configure Custom domain, create A and Cname record for azure web app hosted website in your existing domain (GoDaddy) service provider, and Mapped custom domain to migrated Azure WordPress Webapp site.
• Update existing SSL Certificate to migrated Azure WordPress Webapp site.

Outcome & Benefits:

• WordPress website hosted on Azure Web App is resilient, secure, and cost-optimized.
• You are utilizing managed host facility with High availability and auto-patching.
• Easy to manage and deploy the website application.
• Easy to back up and restore website data.
• Built-in auto scale and load balancing service
• SaaS benefits like easy cloning and cert management
• Website database on Azure Database for MySQL is cost-effective and easy to set up, operate, and scale.
• Advanced security, same-zone or zone-redundant high availability, and a service-level agreement (SLA) of up to 99.99 percent
• Improved database and website performance three times faster than the earlier
• You will see a cost reduction in monthly invoices after this migration.

Mangesh Kharade

Solution Architect – Azure Infrastructure