What is WordPress?

30 years ago, if you told someone that you could build your own website, they would’ve looked at you like you were crazy. Building a website back then was comparable to building a house brick by brick, requiring careful planning and detail at every level- especially the foundation. Nowadays, building a website and web hosting are as easy as it comes, website builders are plentiful and the customization options are more flexible than ever before. Website builder options like Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly are leading the charge in the industry, however, our favorite choice is WordPress. 

WordPress is an open-source content management system that allows anyone to host, build, and publish websites. It is a versatile platform capable of creating and publishing websites and personal projects ranging from personal blog posts and portfolios to e-commerce websites that host millions of users a day. WordPress is free to operate, but requires payment for further features like website naming and domain hosting, further enhancing your website and the experience of your site visitors. 

As described by Hubspot, building a WordPress site requires attention to detail, careful planning, and insight into your own personal budget- though the process is very user-friendly. Publishing your WordPress project is a different story, here is how you could do so on the Lyrid Platform.

How to Deploy and Publish WordPress Projects on Lyrid

Designing and building your WordPress website is one thing, publishing and hosting it is another. Here are the steps to publish your website on Lyrid via Kubernetes:

Step 1: Purchase cluster for website hosting

Hosting is the engine that powers your website, making it accessible on the Internet. To best service your websites and needs, Lyrid uses Kubernetes, providing users with a framework to run distributed systems resiliently and flexibly while enabling users to manage their containerized apps easily. It also automatically takes care of scaling and failover for your application, making it the ideal candidate to power and safeguard a WordPress website.

Deploying a cluster on the Lyrid platform is as easy as filling out a form; simple cluster location specification and ideal filtering outlining are all it takes to get your cluster up and running. In response to your choices, Lyrid will show you a list of available cloud providers that meet and best service your needs: 

Upon selecting a provider, you will be asked to fill in the cluster name, number of nodes, and a plan based on the chosen provider. The total cluster pricing will change depending on the number of nodes, the node plan, and whether or not high availability is offered. Once you finalize the details and payment, wait for 5 minutes, and a new cluster will be created. Now you can access your Kubernetes cluster via the Lyrid dashboard!

Adding a pre-existing cluster to the Lyrid platform is also possible, simply achieved by uploading the kubeconfig file, IP address, and name.

Step 2: Install Longhorn 

Longhorn is a distributed block storage system for Kubernetes, and it can be installed for free on any existing Kubernetes cluster. Longhorn operates by using existing containers to create a storage volume and replicate it synchronously across multiple nodes in a Kubernetes cluster. It adds a layer of resilience to your website and enables consistent backup volume to the backend. For example, if a cluster goes down due to loss of network connection, data can still be saved and be made recoverable. To check if you have Longhorn installed on your cluster, go to its details page, and scroll down to cluster capabilities to see if it has been selected. If not, click on the Longhorn button and confirm to have it added to your cluster!

The alternative option is to connect your Kubernetes cluster to a storage cluster. 

Step 3: Install WordPress to cluster

To use WordPress - you need to have installed WordPress prior! If you haven’t already, go into your cluster’s detail page and scroll to see “Installed Apps”, where all your applications connected to the cluster will be shown. Click on  “+ New App”, and you will see the Helm Deployment pop-up that has several apps ready to be installed. 

Click on Wordpress and fill out the form. If you installed Longhorn as mentioned above, put “longhorn” as your storage class, or use the storage cluster that you have added. The default recommendation configurations are 4Gi Volume, 1000m CPU, and 512Mi memory, which is enough to start a small website. Click Submit, and now you have successfully started a WordPress website!

Step 4: Access WordPress

Now go back to the cluster installed app page, and you should see a new WordPress App under “Installed App”. Click into that box, and you will be redirected to that application page. It will show the application name, domain, root password, and root user. You can now access your WordPress website with the domain, though it should be empty at this stage.

Add “/wp-admin” to the end of your domain to access the admin mode of your website. You may log in with the given root username and root password.

Step 5: Make your first post

Users could start posting by going into “Post”, selecting “New Post”, and then get redirected to an editor. The WordPress editor comes loaded with many built-in features (including themes and plugins), allowing users to customize their website while being very beginner-friendly. Whether you're a seasoned web designer or a complete novice, the intuitive interface and extensive built-in features make website customization a breeze and let you publish your website faster than ever before. Start your blog by adding a title and some text, then you could use the “blocks” offered to add in other forms of media to enrich your blog.

WordPress offers a plethora of customizations for you to choose from, choosing a theme might even be the hardest aspect of WordPress! For a full look into accessing custom options and customizing your website, visit WordPress’ tutorial. 

Hit the publish button and now you have your first WordPress post hosted by Lyrid!

Enhance Projects on WordPress with Lyrid

WordPress is a powerful platform that allows anyone to build and customize their website as freely as they desire. The platform itself is extremely beginner-friendly, bridging the gap between ideation and a tangible product- and we love WordPress because of this aspect.

Through the Lyrid platform, you’re able to utilize all the resilient and flexible features of Kubernetes with all the intuitive capabilities of WordPress, bringing your website to the people in the most efficient way possible. Our infrastructure fully supports any WordPress project you wish to create, letting you bring your innovations to light faster and more securely than ever before.

To learn more about how Lyrid can service your website, visit our website or book a meeting with our team to get an introduction to our services and products.