5 ms·

Why would they choose to host this on Wordpress VIP?

by thomseddon 11y ago

Raphmedia 11y ago
Because it's a one page website that you can have an intern do in about one or two days?
- duaneb 11y ago
  Yea, but it's a hefty bill when facebook runs their own data centers. They could host this for pennies, basically.
  - mikey_p 11y ago
    It's not really a hefty bill if you figure in the time and energy to put ops people into building an HA Wordpress platform that's equivalent to Wordpress VIP, when Facebook isn't a hosting company in the first place.
    - duaneb 11y ago
      You don't need a HA wordpress platform, you just need to point your data center's CDN at your internal wordpress platform running on an raspberry pi.
      - mikey_p 10y ago
        Even then you have to think about security, do you really want wordpress running on your companies internal network?
arich 11y ago
I'm actually wondering the same thing. Have you seen the hosting cost? $10,000/month avg. Clearly they can handle traffic themselves. What's the advantage here?
- aembleton 11y ago
  Probably a different department and/or it takes too long to get sign off for deployment into their own data centre.
- mkhalil 11y ago
  "Prices for WordPress.com VIP Cloud Hosting start at $5000 per month for up to 5 websites. Our Self-Hosted services start at $15k per year. If that sounds like a good fit, get in touch!" Seems like for $5k a month they can use it for 5 websites and $1k a website a month is worth the mindset of "set it and forget it".
smpetrey 11y ago
Who knows. Maybe this was put together last minute with little coordination with engineering.
mikey_p 11y ago
Probably because there's no one at Facebook or no infrastructure that is specifically setup for hosting stuff like this. Facebook is a product company, not a hosting company, so this makes perfect sense. I work in the marketing department of a late stage technology start up and we face the same problem. We have lots of excellent people all over the company, but it's a tradeoff in terms of asking people to work on Wordpress hosting infra vs. just paying a service like Wordpress VIP to handle it.
jeremydw 11y ago
Speculation: The production of this page was likely handled by Marketing, which functionally likely sits in a different org within FB and doesn't have access to many eng resources. So, Marketing sees WP VIP as an easy way to get a site up by just running a credit card. Speaking from experience, I think this "outsourcing" is probably good – if there's indeed no engineering team dedicated to Marketing needs like this. That said, I'm sure WP VIP will break down when Marketing's needs increase – such as when Marketing needs to do internationalization, or perform a timed launch of a new site/content update.

Why would they choose to host this on Wordpress VIP?

Raphmedia 11y ago

Because it's a one page website that you can have an intern do in about one or two days?

duaneb 11y ago
Yea, but it's a hefty bill when facebook runs their own data centers. They could host this for pennies, basically.
- mikey_p 11y ago
  It's not really a hefty bill if you figure in the time and energy to put ops people into building an HA Wordpress platform that's equivalent to Wordpress VIP, when Facebook isn't a hosting company in the first place.
  - duaneb 11y ago
    You don't need a HA wordpress platform, you just need to point your data center's CDN at your internal wordpress platform running on an raspberry pi.
    - mikey_p 10y ago
      Even then you have to think about security, do you really want wordpress running on your companies internal network?

arich 11y ago

I'm actually wondering the same thing. Have you seen the hosting cost? $10,000/month avg. Clearly they can handle traffic themselves. What's the advantage here?

aembleton 11y ago
Probably a different department and/or it takes too long to get sign off for deployment into their own data centre.
mkhalil 11y ago
"Prices for WordPress.com VIP Cloud Hosting start at $5000 per month for up to 5 websites. Our Self-Hosted services start at $15k per year. If that sounds like a good fit, get in touch!" Seems like for $5k a month they can use it for 5 websites and $1k a website a month is worth the mindset of "set it and forget it".

smpetrey 11y ago

Who knows. Maybe this was put together last minute with little coordination with engineering.

mikey_p 11y ago

Probably because there's no one at Facebook or no infrastructure that is specifically setup for hosting stuff like this. Facebook is a product company, not a hosting company, so this makes perfect sense. I work in the marketing department of a late stage technology start up and we face the same problem. We have lots of excellent people all over the company, but it's a tradeoff in terms of asking people to work on Wordpress hosting infra vs. just paying a service like Wordpress VIP to handle it.

jeremydw 11y ago

Speculation: The production of this page was likely handled by Marketing, which functionally likely sits in a different org within FB and doesn't have access to many eng resources. So, Marketing sees WP VIP as an easy way to get a site up by just running a credit card. Speaking from experience, I think this "outsourcing" is probably good – if there's indeed no engineering team dedicated to Marketing needs like this. That said, I'm sure WP VIP will break down when Marketing's needs increase – such as when Marketing needs to do internationalization, or perform a timed launch of a new site/content update.