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Load Balancing Virtualmin WordPress Hosting Server with Varnish on AWS

Chris Gilligan — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:43:06 +0000

I am creating a true load balancer topography for a WordPress hosting server, if it needs to scale up beyond what the current system can handle.

Scaling Levels

The current system is the “admin” path shown in the diagram, with no CDN or Load Balancing. It will handle a lot of traffic, but it is somewhat vulnerable to failure and overload. A simple and inexpensive extension of this system is to add CloudFront CDN, the “beta users” path.

For ultimate reliability and speed, I propose the “users” path: This will take most load off of the Virtualmin/Apache and Webmin/MySQL servers, because the user will be interacting only with CloudFront CDN and Varnish Caching Servers.

Load Balancing

The Load Balancing layer can be deployed separate from the current configuration, with DNS change to Route 53 for domains that require Load Balancing. If DNS routing for a domain goes to the Elastic IP, that traffic will interact directly with the primary Virtualmin/Apache server, which is OK for beta stage.

Traffic via Route 53 will be served from the Varnish instances, which will be load balanced, in multiple Availability Zones, and will serve cached WordPress pages as static HTML.

W3 Total Cache coordinates Apache and Varnish to provide updated disk-cached pages, and some data objects. CloudFront CDN pulls linked images, css, js, etc. from Apache via the W3 disk and opcode caches.

Redundancy and Fault Tolerance

More fault tolerance, speed and redundancy can be created via RAID10 arrays of multiple EBS Volumes, attached to the Virtualmin and Webmin instances. Creating a Storage Area Network for these volumes will provide shared /home and /var for the primary and slave instances.

Slave Server pairs for Virtualmin/Apache and Webmin/MySQL can be created to respond in round-robin fashion to the Varnish requests. With AWS Auto-scaling, more instances can be created on-demand if load on the backend servers is too great.

EBS snapshots of primary database server and web server will provide speedy recovery from catastrophic failure.
S3 backups of virtual domains on the primary Virtualmin/Apache server will provide speedy restoration of broken code or loss of files.

Be aware that creating a system with all of the elements I have described could be very expensive, and probably not necessary unless traffic is in the millions.

Website Workflow

WordPress sites:

Create Virtual Domain, which automatically provisions WordPress with database and custom plugins/templates
Build WordPress site via the Elastic IP (spoof DNS on your local machine to do this)

At Soft Launch (client approval or beta):

Point A record to Elastic IP
Set up W3 Total Cache with CloudFront and Varnish, but do not deploy

At Public Launch:

Deploy W3TC
Point A record to Route 53, or set name servers to Route 53

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Office Furniture Retail Showcase

Chris Gilligan — Tue, 17 May 2011 15:21:01 +0000

Office Coordinators Inc. website

I worked with Office Coordinators Inc’s talented in-house designers to update the OCI website. OCI chose an e-commerce theme, and we completely reworked the CSS and layout to match their colors and logo treatment. After a previous failed attempt with another developer, they were surprised at how quickly the site came together, and how easy it is to manage with WordPress!

“Inquiry mode” e-commerce: customers can select items, add to shopping cart, then email for more information or price quote
Search Engine Optimization: Google Analytics and Sitemaps
WordPress Content Management
Social Networking with Facebook “score card”

Thank you for your persistence. You’re our favorite website/technically savvy guy ever.
— Emily Vaughn, OCI

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Bike Shop Website with Facebook Features

Chris Gilligan — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 21:51:43 +0000

Suck Creek Cycle website

I’ve been hosting and helping with Suck Creek Cycle’s website since they opened in 1998. The site was long overdue for an upgrade, so I took an existing template design and tweaked it a bit to look like the bike shop, then integrated social media and syndicated content from their vendors.

Facebook local business page integration — publish from WordPress directly to Facebook
Facebook Friends and Wall displayed on the website
RSS Syndication for news from cycling sites and bike vendors

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Farmers Market Website

Chris Gilligan — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 19:35:30 +0000

Main St Farmers Market website

This is a major redesign of the website for Chattanooga’s Main St Farmers Market. Local designers Widgets & Stone came up with the logos and suggested the look and feel, and I worked with Padgett Arnold to get the visuals and content just right. One interesting fact about the site: the web server is located on Main St as well! Keepin’ it LOCAL!

Interactive home page presents tons of information in a compact javascript slider
Fresh content includes recipes and a list of what’s available each week
Facebook fan page gets automatically updated with new content
New photos and videos are easily uploaded via SlideShowPro and YouTuber for a fun, engaging user experience
Lightweight CSS3 design and an alternative layout for mobile browsers present the site quickly and efficiently

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Landscape Architect Website with Slideshows & Social Media Integration

Chris Gilligan — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:32:48 +0000

Craig Design Group Website

This is a simple website for a Chattanooga based landscape architect that focuses on beautiful portfolio slideshows. We’ve also added Twitter and Facebook integration to keep fans and customers updated on the latest projects.

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Social Media — Facebook, Twitter, Blogging and Sharing

Chris Gilligan — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:19:42 +0000

Social media, including sites like Facebook and MySpace, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, and sharing/bookmarking tools like Digg, Del.icio.us and Stumble Upon are all very important to your outreach to customers, not to mention the incoming links they provide, and the potential of exponential viral traffic.

Add to this the need for regular blogging (on your site and other platforms) and email updates, and the management of all this online communication becomes daunting. What if there were a way to integrate all of your modes of online presence, so you’d only have to post once to update all of the different platforms? Well, the short answer is: there is.

I’ve been working with a local organic farm to update their online presence, and we’ve come up with a very simple implementation of WordPress that cross-posts to Facebook Pages and Twitter. Every blog post automatically creates an entry with linkback on Facebook Pages, and an accompanying Tweet with linkback. It has been a great way to keep the farm’s audience informed and engaged.

Additionally, we’ve added bookmarking links for all of the major social media platforms and favorites keepers, thus adding to the potential for viral sharing.

I’m also working on a mailing list that further integrates with WordPress, and it’s looking very promising. There is a new WordPress mailing list plugin that allows opt-in or manually entered mailing list clients to manage automated subscriptions to blog and page updates, and allows administrators to manage multiple mailing lists, and send newsletters and alerts. It integrates with the website seamlessly and also has WYSIWYG editing.

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Organic Farm Website with Slideshows and Content Management

Chris Gilligan — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:09:28 +0000

Sequatchie Cove Farm website

This site was produced in tandem with Widgets & Stone, a Chattanooga design firm. We’re members of Sequatchie Cove Farm’s Community Shared Agriculture program, so we are very familiar with the quality of the eggs, dairy, meat and produce coming out of the clean and fertile Sequatchie Valley.

(Will Work for Food!)

WordPress Content Management System allows the farmers to easily add their opinions, information and images
Automated updates to Facebook Pages, with linkback
Automatic Twitter tweets for new posts, with linkback
Social Media bookmarking
SlideShowPro gives the site a slick Flash-based Image Management System so the site can feature seasonal images.
MailMan manages a plethora of mailing lists for the weekly emails that keep the farmers connected to the communities and individuals they serve

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Rafting and Adventure Travel Site with Reservation Form

Chris Gilligan — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:20:28 +0000

Southeastern Expeditions website

This site, for an adventure travel company that runs rafting and eco-tourism trips in North and Central America, features a clean interactive design and extensive search engine optimization, including tailored metatags, hyperlinks, and a backlink referral network.

The site also features a simple reservation form that collects all information needed by booking specialists to bill for trip deposit and contact the customer to seal the deal, and saves the info in a secure database for retrieval.

Joomla Content Management System allows owners to update information, add new pages and modules to highlight season specials
TLS/SSH: secure encryption of confidential customer information

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Regional Visioning Plan

Chris Gilligan — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:04:53 +0000

Chattanooga STAND website

This site, completed for Chattanooga’s Create Here, in tandem with design firm Widgets & Stone, is for a regional visioning process being conducted around Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Tell-a-friend and Volunteer forms
Semantic, search engine and handheld browser friendly design
Google Analytics to track page views, form submissions, pdf and file downloads
Expression Engine multi-site manager
- custom fields: staffers can frequently and easily update the content and sidebars

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Content Management Consulting

Chris Gilligan — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:38:59 +0000

AJC Media Solutions website

I was contracted to develop the content management system for the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s AJC Media Solutions site.

I took a great design from IQ Interactive, created Joomla 1.5 templates, and structured the site so IQ and AJC staffers could easily add content, including an extensive collection of Flash movies and PDF whitepapers.

Working from home and traveling to Atlanta for a few days, with follow up documentation and consultation, I got the project done on time and well within the budget.

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