Howdy Welcome to the Ask Barry session at…
Howdy!
Welcome to the Ask Barry session at WordCamp San Francisco! Feel free to ask your questions in this thread and I will answer them during the session.
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Howdy!
Welcome to the Ask Barry session at WordCamp San Francisco! Feel free to ask your questions in this thread and I will answer them during the session.
Aaron D. Campbell, and 48 others are discussing. 
Ask Barry - WCSF 2011 
Lew 10:47 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Could you give us a high level overview of the stack that currently powers wordpress.com?
Andrew Nacin 10:52 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Barry says: nginx. Load balancers in the front, running nginx. Behind that, various caching layers, running nginx. Behind that, application servers, running nginx. Caching with memcached. MySQL as the database server.
William P. Davis 10:48 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
I noticed WordPress.com uses batcached instead of Varnish. Can you talk about your decision? I’m specifically interested in how you guys handle logged-in users.
William P. Davis 11:05 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Barry says: Used to use Varnish, still do on some sites such as gravatar, but batcached is easier to work with. Logged-in users don’t see any HTML caching.
Chason 10:48 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
What filesystem do you use on WordPress.com?
chaos'1 10:49 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Can you ask the crowd “How many people use Multi-Domain > Multi-Site?”
Michael 10:58 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Is it possible to mix subdirectory and subdomain multisite in WordPress 3.2?
Andrew Nacin 11:00 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Not out of the box. But you can with your own sunrise.php.
jkudish 11:00 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
I think Ptah Dunbar has a solution for this, ask him?
Austin Passy 11:00 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Wait for the magic. (magic takes a few versions)
Mark Jaquith 11:00 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
We might support it eventually.
sillyandrea 11:12 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
you can if you make a subfolder install and map the subdomains, but it’s… kludgy.
Peter Chester 10:49 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
How do you handle flushing memcached for a single site on a large mu installation. people keep saying “prefix the key with the site id”
Mark Jaquith 11:02 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
You don’t prefix the site id, you prefix a version number for that site id. So to flush it, you increment it.
Mark Jaquith 11:03 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
And you store the version number in the cache, but it itself is unversioned (obviously).
Peter Chester 11:04 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
brilliant! i think this finally makes sense to me. Thanks!!!
Andrew Nacin 11:04 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Barry just mentioned this: http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/advanced-caching/.
Andrew Nacin 11:04 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
And this, not that it’s useful: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/advanced-caching/.
Vincent 10:49 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Is it possible to limit thumbnail sizes to certain post types? If you have a lot of thumbnail sizes it’s easy for you to use up all your disk space right away.
Vincent 10:50 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Or rather, what would be the best way to do it?
Austin Passy 11:06 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Use a CDN? Or remove certain image sizes.
Austin Passy 11:07 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
See: removing standard image sizes
Ryan Duff 11:09 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink
Thanks Austin. I was just about to link to that… 😉
Otto 11:11 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
If you want to try dynamic image resizing (on a non-multisite setup), try this plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dynamic-image-resizer/
Mark Jaquith 10:49 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
How do you handle media propagation, cold storage, etc, on WordPress.com?
Andrew Nacin 11:01 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
+1
rfair404 11:02 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Yes, how to you keep user uploaded media current on n servers in real time?
Mark Jaquith 11:09 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Answer summary: pool of ~60 media masters running NFS. Propagates out from there.
DB table to keep track of where images are in the queue.
Matt 11:15 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
60 servers running NFS? That’s alot.
Daniel Frett 11:22 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
For our wordpress multi-site deploy using 2 webservers we use MogileFS as the file store. We wrote a MogileFS FUSE binding that we have released the code for here: https://github.com/frett/MogileFS-Fuse
we mount our MogileFS store and point the wordpress upload path at it.
Thorsten 10:50 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
This is from Sara —> Can you introduce yourself for those who don’t know?
Peter Chester 10:57 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
+1 – good idea.
kovshenin 11:11 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
And he’s the one who fixed the live stream, right? 🙂
rfair404 10:50 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
What techniques are used to load balance database servers
William P. Davis 11:12 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/hyperdb/
Andrew Nacin 11:12 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Answer: HyperDB.
Jim McQuillan 11:13 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
How many database servers and databases per server are used on WordPress.com?
Konstantin Kovshenin 10:50 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Please tell us how the WordPress.com differs from the multi-server multi-site WordPress.org website. Thanks!
Konstantin Kovshenin 11:14 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Loved your answer, thanks! I still have a feeling that there’s something special in the infrastructure.
chaos'1 11:15 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Awesome question.
Konstantin Kovshenin 11:17 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Thanks!
Konstantin Kovshenin 11:15 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Barry you’re the best! 🙂
Jess 10:51 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
What’s the word on wordpress on windows/iis love it? Hate it? Recommend it? What’s being done if anything to drive more adoption on windows
Mark Jaquith 10:59 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Not really a Barry question, so I’ll answer: It’s a bit of a second class citizen, because it’s a small amount of users, and we don’t have good access to those dev environments. But Microsoft is very much pro-WordPress these days, and is eager to help us out, and it’s getting better.
Jess 11:03 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Thanks mark
Chason 10:51 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
What does your nginx config file look like?
Chason 11:00 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Sorry, way too generic question. Skip this please!
chaos'1 11:14 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
no.
Chason 11:16 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Looks like it was skipped. So nyah!
Mark Jaquith 11:17 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
I was talking to Barry about this. The summary is: LONG. 🙂
Peter Westwood 11:27 am on August 17, 2011 Permalink |
Long is an understatement 🙂
Katie 10:51 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
We are building a member based community site that is focused on gathering a high number of unique subscribers posting and interacting on the site. Will there be a problem as we grow? Is there anything we need to prepare for? i.e. at a certain number of subscribers 10,000, 10million?
Calin Don 10:52 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
What nginx modules you use for caching?
Calin Don 10:54 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
or patches
Edwin 10:53 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Whats your opinion on running own servers vs using a service like Amazon? How many engineers do you guys have for maintaining (OS) updates etc?
Konstantin Kovshenin 10:53 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Mark mentioned “the madness at WordPress.com” tell us about the “madness” part please 😉
Rob Saurini 10:54 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
When’s the new WP comment system coming out? DO WANT.
trademark 10:55 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
+1
Alex Mills 11:01 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Highlander is still being tweaked/worked on but it will be coming to Jetpack at some point.
trademark 11:04 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Neat!
Rob Saurini 11:06 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Thanks Viper 🙂
Ipstenu 11:09 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Alex, will it work with bbPress? 😉
Aaron Jorbin 10:55 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
What do you use for continuous deployment? Do you deploy to percentages and then if things don’t blow up you continue the deployment?
Chelsea Otakan 11:19 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
A fancy magic button.
Aaron Jorbin 11:20 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Thanks!
Barry’s Answer: SVN UP. For server deployments, they use Servermattic. http://code.trac.wordpress.org/browser/servermattic
Dan 10:56 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Are your services virtual or physical, and why?
Dan 11:01 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Actually, I meant servers, not services. I’m dumb
Michael 10:56 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Are there any significant disadvantages to running WordPress on Virtual Machines, versus dedicated hardware?
Patrick 10:57 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
From a noob wordpress developer: What’s the best book/web resource you would recommend to read to help become a wordpress developing fiend?
Matt 10:57 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
+1
Andrew Nacin 11:02 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Not really a question for Barry, so here: http://wordpress.org/about/books/.
Mike Schinkel 11:06 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470916222/
kwight 11:16 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Also good, particularly when starting out: http://www.amazon.com/Professional-WordPress-Wrox-Programmer/dp/0470560541
Eric Gould 10:57 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Where are you 3 data centers. Do you load balance by geo.
Niall Kennedy 11:20 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Chicago, Dallas, and San Antonio.
WordPress.com VIP summary page:
pinar 10:58 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
When I install themes I have to connect to our own database which is Apache, but when I put in my FTP info, I cannot select the Secure FTP option on the wordpress admin site, even though this is how I normally connect with dreamweaver. Can you tell me why that happens?
pinar 10:59 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
i meant web server not database
Otto 11:19 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
The FTPS (SSL) option only is available if you have the PHP FTP extension installed. The SSH2 option is only available if you have the PHP SSH extension installed. Basically, it determines what you can use based on what capabilities your PHP install has, and only gives you options that will work.
pinar 12:01 am on August 14, 2011 Permalink |
Thanks for the reply. I’ll check it out. Still don’t understand why wordpress core does not have this installed by default. It seems like it should automatically have that option.
Dion Hulse (@dd32) 10:57 am on August 15, 2011 Permalink |
Put simply: WordPress has the support out of the box, however, it’s likely your Servers PHP install which can’t handle it, WordPress thinks it can (and so is offering it) – but when push comes to shove, PHP says no.
The guy in the striped sweatshirt in the 7th row near the window 11:00 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Can a multi-network install contain itself?
Andrew Nacin 11:06 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Could you elaborate what you mean? Other than the apparent Inception reference.
The guy in the striped sweatshirt in the 7th row near the window 11:09 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
That’s exactly what I meant 🙂
sillyandrea 11:13 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
do you mean can you install another network in a network? other than the URLS, yes.
The guy in the striped sweatshirt in the 7th row near the window 11:19 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
That joke sounded funnier in my head. Sorry
chaos'1 11:28 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Inception Button: http://inception.davepedu.com/
Björn Sennbrink 11:00 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Any plans to implement any pay-to-use features to WordPress.org and if so, what would we pay to receive that we do not already receive today (by using the free software)?
Joachim Kudish 11:03 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
I highly doubt there would ever be paid services directly on WordPress.org.
Björn Sennbrink 11:04 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Are you a member of WP dev/marketing team?
Joachim Kudish 11:07 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
no, nor is there such a thing. There’s a core WordPress contribution team, which yes, I have contributed to WordPress. There’s a marketing team at Automattic, but they run WordPress.com not .org…
Chelsea Otakan 11:04 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open_source_software
Andrew Nacin 11:06 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
This isn’t a question for Barry, but no, the plan is for the software on WordPress.org to always be free.
Björn Sennbrink 11:09 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Great, thank you. I just jumped in here via Twitter and sorry if I asked the “wrong” question =)
Mark Jaquith 11:22 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
No plans to do that. I feel pretty strongly about this. Love that people monetize WordPress, but I want WordPress.org to be all about zero cost web publishing.
Peter Westwood 11:28 am on August 17, 2011 Permalink |
+1
Cyri 11:01 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
How many concurrent new user registrations can WordPress.com handle?
Cyri 1:44 am on August 13, 2011 Permalink |
Maybe I should have phrased that how many new user registrations per second can wordpress.com handle? On a single server I have found a few hundred people registering at the same time crashes the site… wondering with your big infrastructure if you just don’t have that issue or if you stagger the handling of the registrations if you suddenly get big peak of people all registering at the same time. The use case is in schools where large classes are all registering a site at the same time on a multisite install.
Victor Alvarez 11:04 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Hi Mom!
Joachim Kudish 11:06 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
-1
Mike Schroder 11:06 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Can you give us an overview on how your MySQL/database backend is set up?
robert vidrine 11:07 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Is there a good way to keep changes in one site from affecting other sites, other than multiple domains (cPanel for instance) or multiple VMs? (Way to have own database?)
suzi 11:16 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
what’s your favorite ice cream flavor?
Sara Rosso 11:19 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Strawberry basil.
suzi 11:20 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
ooooohhh….
jai 11:18 pm on August 12, 2011 Permalink |
Do you use virtulization.
Matthew 8:54 pm on August 13, 2011 Permalink |
Hi Barry-
Recently there was a WordPress upgrade that made PHP 5.2.4 a requirement. Can you at all foresee when that requirement will change?
Thank you,
Aaron D. Campbell 12:06 am on August 14, 2011 Permalink |
There are two things you have to consider here. Adoption and advantage.
Adoption of new PHP versions by hosts is EXTREMELY slow. We finally dropped support for PHP 4 when we had less than 10% of sites still using it. It’s going to be a while before that makes sense again.
Additionally we ONLY did that because there were significant advantages to 5.2.4 over the previous 4.x requirement. For example, you won’t see a 5.2.4 -> 5.2.17 requirements bump because there’s not enough of an advantage to make it worth abandoning any users (even if it’s a small percentage).