AWS WordPress Hosting

Staq is powered by many AWS services. Centralize your AWS WordPress sites in one platform.

Staq provides managed WordPress hosting solutions on the AWS network.

In an easy-to-use interface, the Staq service brings together the necessary AWS services for WordPress along with other features outside of AWS to help better manage WordPress websites at scale.

Below is the typical flow from creating a WordPress website on the environment through to deployment and then management to see how Staq and AWS work together.

The Creation Process

Select an EC2 Instance Region

Select an AWS region ie. Sydney. A WordPress site is then installed on an EC2 Instance based on your selected region.

WP Install

A WordPress site is then installed on an EC2 Instance based in your selected region.

IAM

Each WordPress website that is created comes with its own and unique AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) number. We use IAM for security and identity purposes. It is used to communicate securely with AWS S3, CloudFront for clearing CDN cache and Route53 for wildcard SSL validation.

Database

Your database does not exist on the EC2 instance. We, instead, host the database within the same region using AWS RDS MariaDB service.

The Ongoing Process

Regular Backups

By default, your database of each website is backed up every 12 hours. An automated full backup is created each month and every 24 hours, incremental backups of newly modified or added items are then backed up.

If you need to restore, it's a simple 1-click process. You can also take a manual backup at any time.

All backups are stored securely inside AWS S3 instead on the same EC2 Instance (server).

Lambda

While uploading images inside WordPress, we send your image to an S3 bucket and store the original image. We then also send that image to AWS Lambda for processing. We instruct Lambda to compress and optimize the image based on the settings elected inside the Staq Hosting plugin found inside your WordPress website.

Lambda also converts the image into WebP format. Then, we store the image inside S3.

The outcome is that S3 buckets contain the original image (for future modification to optimization settings) along with the converted and optimized images

S3 Buckets

Images and videos are automatically offloaded into S3 buckets. You can elect to show the S3 URL on your website. At the very minimum, we back up your Media Library contents inside S3.

The Take Live Process

60 Second Deployment

Staq makes it super easy to take your WordPress site live. It handles everything from moving your site from staging to production, changing URLs, removing search engine blockers to generating an SSL certificate.

All you have to do is click GO LIVE in the Staq interface.

Staq DNS powered by Route53

It's optional, but if you wish to use AWS Route 53, you can manage all DNS entries within Staq.

Staq Traditional CDN powered by CloudFront

1-click deployment of Staq CDN (powered by AWS CloudFront) if you use Staq DNS (powered by AWS Route53). Alternatively, set your 2x CNAME records inside your DNS and it'll push to AWS CloudFront.

The CDN feature offloads plugins, themes, images, videos and all files in between. Staq will automatically change all URLs within WordPress.

Please note that the EC2 instance will process all requests. If you wish to offload the entire website to CloudFront, see the next feature below.

Push WordPress website to CloudFront

Experience added performance and security.

If you use Staq DNS (powered by AWS Route53) together with Staq Next-Gen CDN (powered by AWS CloudFront) with 1-click, Staq will create an alias A record in Staq DNS, push the entire website to CloudFront and reroute all website traffic to CloudFront.

That way, your entire website is cached in CloudFront with the added benefit of AWS Shield for added security.

If a server request back to the EC2 instance is required, Staq will intelligently reroute that request back to the EC2 instance to perform the request.

Read more about Staq Next-Gen CDN

Security

AWS Shield

When you have Staq Next-Gen CDN enabled, it reroutes your DNS to A records that are CloudFront.

When traffic is routed to CloudFront, by default, the website is protected by AWS Shield.