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The future of WordPress performance: CDNs, HTTP/2, and more

Vasken Hauri on January 5, 2016 • 5 Comments

It’s an exciting time in the WordPress community, with the release of Calypso, a successful inaugural WordCamp US, and WordPress now powering 25% of all websites. Maturation of the WordPress REST API is enabling the decoupling of the content management layer from the display layer, which has the potential to further drive adoption; larger teams can write independent code that communicates via the API, reducing blockers and accelerating feature releases. At the same time, the entire Web is poised to undergo a metamorphosis, as HTTP/2 begins to fundamentally change how content is delivered.

While these developments offer tremendous potential for those of us who work with WordPress for a living, I think there are some important considerations to keep in mind as WordPress and the Web move into a new era of maturity and possibility.

Using a CDN with DDoS protection is increasingly important

We recently started testing a CDN service that offers DDoS protection and mitigation for this site. While we hardly consider ourselves a high-profile target, the number of attacks reported by service is astonishing (more than a dozen every day, sometimes double or triple that). The majority are attempts to exploit known vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins (or other common web applications), such as those listed in the WP Vulnerability Database. Exploit mitigation (or at least, notification) at the CDN layer provider is compelling.

In addition to protection from known vulnerabilities, CDNs are vital to accommodating significant burst traffic, and eliminate the effort involved in hosting sites in multiple datacenter across the world. Instead of scaling your servers to manage exponential traffic as a story goes viral or an online catalog gets slammed on Cyber Monday, the work is offloaded to the CDN and its network of edge servers.

Of course, a CDN might not speed up your site–in fact, it can do just the opposite if you start serving up your site over HTTP/2 and you’re using “best practices” for optimizing your site for HTTP1.1.

10up takes Salt Lake City

Vasken Hauri on September 12, 2014

This Saturday, September 13th, I’ll be presenting at WordCamp Salt Lake City on the topic of JavaScript and jQuery best practices in WordPress. In light of the upcoming integration of the WP JSON API into WordPress Core, my presentation will focus on building high-quality, performant front-end code that can be safely distributed in the WordPress.org repo.

As WordPress grows beyond a publishing platform to become a powerful and highly extensible CMS with its own JSON API, the need to write clean, readable, and efficient JavaScript is becoming increasingly critical. My talk will cover some common pitfalls that can occur in JavaScript engineering, including overuse of DOM elements, improper variable scoping, and lack of closures within script files. In particular, I’ll explore current best practices in PHP WordPress engineering, with an eye towards applying those same lessons and standards to JavaScript.

Heckling me from the crowd will be various members of an entire 10up pod, visiting Salt Lake City as part of their annual pod retreat. 10uppers in attendance include Kailey Lampert, Rachel Backer, Cameron Benedict, Faison Zutavern, Erin Crutcher, Darin Kotter, John Bloch, Cole Geissenger, and Grant Landram.

If you’re a WordPress engineer looking to find out about the latest and greatest that the upcoming JSON API has to offer, as well as how you can create plugins that use the API effectively while still playing nicely with other plugins, this talk is for you.

10up goes to the Oscars with Entertainment Weekly

Vasken Hauri on March 2, 2014

As an agency with a reputation for building world-class solutions with WordPress, it may surprise you that one of our latest and most exciting projects barely even involves WordPress.

A new Interactive Dashboard experience, built for Entertainment Weekly’s desktop and mobile websites, presents real-time content from across EW’s vast network of industry-leading entertainment reporting. The Dashboard enables EW’s team to instantly post and curate relevant content from Twitter, EW’s network of entertainment blogs (powered by WordPress), and exclusive Red Carpet photos, serving up a true second-screen interactive experience for major entertainment events.

The Dashboard had its first successful trial run during the Grammys, and will be in full swing during tonight’s Oscars presentation!

Whether you’re on your computer, iPad, or mobile phone, we hope you’ll tune in!

Vasken Hauri joins 10up as Director of Strategic Engineering

Vasken Hauri on February 25, 2013

If you’re the kind of person who frequents WordCamps, jQuery conferences, or higher ed tech events, there’s a chance you may have already met me. If not, here’s a quick rundown of the diverse, wide-ranging, and somewhat eclectic set of skills I’ve honed over 12 years, and why I’m excited to bring them to 10up.

I’ve been working with WordPress since 2006, when I began using it for my personal blog. Since then, I’ve engineered WordPress to create everything from order fulfillment and tracking applications to APIs that withstand several hundred thousand hits per day. I’m proud to have been able to contribute some of the more generally useful pieces of this work back to the community, including several plugins hosted on the WordPress repository, changes to WordPress core, and assorted open-source Github projects.

A previous job in higher ed afforded me an opportunity to pursue and earn a Master’s Degree in Business Administration, and I was able to leverage those skills while working as a developer and Team Leader at GigaOM over the past two years. I’ve worked on every stage of major projects, from data modeling and wireframes to final style tweaks and coordination of release marketing. Having spent nine years working in higher education technology, I know from experience what it takes to engineer successful projects while remaining cognizant of the unique challenges faced by larger institutions when implementing technology solutions.