What is WP.cloud?

 It’s the WP minute. If you missed Matt mullenweg’s address at word camp us 2022. He snuck in a mention of the new hosting infrastructure without much context around it called. wp.cloud could automat be building the next WordPress hosting company behind the scenes. What if he wanted to launch a w commerce specific hosting company, possibly a solution that end users didn’t even know was running WordPress.
I reached out to Jesse Friedman director of innovation at automatic. Now leading the WP cloud product with a series of questions to explore this very topic a bit further. If you enjoy content like. Consider supporting us@buymeiacoffee.com slash Matt report. It’s the best way to ensure that we’ll keep publishing this content right to your podcast app, your blog, readers, your browsers and your email inbox.
Get it all@buymeiacoffee.com slash Matt report. Subscribe to the show@thewpminute.com slash S. Okay, here we go with Jesse Friedman. Hey Jesse. Welcome
to the program. Thanks for having me on the
show, Matt. So tell us what’s the day to day like for director of innovation at
automatic, I spend my time working with partners to improve the distribution and quality of our products.
WordPress works so well because we are community comprised of creators, publishers, developers, plug-in authors, and hosting companies. I do my best to funnel what I learned from hosting companies and other partners back to our product teams. This is a unique way of leveraging our relationships to expand what we know about our products, how people use them and what features we should expand on.
I love what I do, and I’m blessed to work alongside some very talented and dedicated people, both within and outside of automatic. Still my favorite part of the job is getting to go to word camps around the world and meet with people who use jet pack w commerce, wordpress.com and WP cloud. Every day’s a fantastic
answer.
Listen, I’ve talked to Mullenweg about other bets before to preface for the rest of the interview. Does WP cloud fall
into this category? Nope. Other bets is an opportunity for automatic to invest in and support products that either need time to incubate or are not directly related to our core WordPress services.
Examples of this would be P two or pocket cast. Respectively. The technology powering WP cloud has existed for years, born from a need to be able to support the websites with the highest traffic and transactions on wordpress.com pressable and news pack. Hmm.
Another fantastic answer. Uh, number. What is wp.cloud
WP cloud is a pass or platform as a service version of the automatic infrastructure built by WordPress experts for WordPress experts.
More specifically WP cloud is how hosting companies can leverage a WordPress first cloud platform to service their highest trafficked websites. It’s a tried and tested cloud platform built on a global network of data centers that we maintain and operate our. We aren’t outsourcing anything to the major cloud providers.
In fact, we see WP cloud as an alternative to the three major cloud providers. Think about WP cloud as the gold standard for WordPress cloud hosting out of the box. We ha offer essential security tools like web application, firewalls, DDoS protection, hourly database, and daily file backups as thel certificates and TLS encrypt.
We build trust with high availability, full data center, redundancies and automated failure detection. With zero downtime migration. We are seeing unprecedented speed with automated WordPress edge caching and a built in CDN powered by four origin and 24 edge data centers located around the globe. And we offer truly manage WordPress hosting by handling WordPress core plugin and theme updates, migration tools, and SSH access for pro.
If you’re interested in digging deeper, take a look at how WP cloud performed on review signals, hosting performance benchmarks available for review under the wordpress.com and pressable brands today. The WP cloud infrastructure handles over 13 billion page views a month, and it’s growing our APIs, make it easy for a hosting company to layer their platform and experience on top of WP.
This allows hosts to focus on delivering outstanding onboarding management and customer service experiences. While we maintain the cloud platform underneath it. To any hosting companies out there that are listening, WP cloud is a way for you to reduce your cost, to serve eliminate costly server platform, software, expand and innovate on site building experiences and provide fully managed WordPress hosting.
It’s almost like you’ve practiced that answer. Uh, Automatic recently invested in a seed round within the WP. Are you leveraging tech from any other investments
in the stack? No. WP cloud is completely homegrown on an infrastructure. We manage internally. We don’t leverage third party services or outsource any of the work involved in management.
How much of jet pack plus WP cloud plus.com share the same infrastructure
jet pack. The answer is. Jet pack layers on top of WB cloud, beautifully giving end users direct access to additional security and performance tools. However, jet pack is in no way required operate WP cloud and doesn’t share underlining infrastructure.
However, WP cloud does power pressable news pack and the higher tier plans on wordpress.com and soon grid pain. In that sense, WP cloud and wordpress.com are sharing infrastructure
who is an ideal customer for the product. What should they expect for onboarding to wp.cloud
WP cloud outta the box is the safest, fastest, most reliable cloud platform I’ve ever worked with making it ideal for any WordPress instance that needs a high availability and speed.
That being said WP cloud and its APIs are a B2B solution geared towards helping hosting companies provide a world class cloud platform. Take a look at the WP cloud website, for example, it runs pressable and has absolutely no custom server configurations. We did basic performance optimization on the site, but WP cloud handles the rest.
By default. When we launched the site, it was the first time I had ever seen straight 100 S across all the Google lighthouse scores. They even have a fireworks Easter egg, which was fun to see if you want to experience a real speed, go to wp.cloud. You’ll think it was hosted locally. WP cloud is going to change the way we host websites.
Unlike the other cloud providers who split their focus across dozens of verticals, powering everything from logistics, for warehouses to virtual reality, to game service to websites, WP cloud. On the other hand is a hundred percent focused on hosting WordPress. Since WP cloud is layered under a hosting company’s platform and UI, you can choose the hosting experience that is right for you while leveraging the speed and availability of WP.
Use wordpress.com. If you prefer a more bespoke hosting experience while pressable is available to those who want a more classic managed hosting experience, or if you run an agency and want to white label your hosting solutions, take a look at our newest partner grid pain. Who’ll be rolling out a WP cloud integration in the coming months.
The point is that WB cloud is the perfect cloud solution for WordPress and is available to you. No matter your level of knowledge or expertise,
Jesse, are you reading these answers off of a piece of. Uh, next question. What size team is behind
wp.cloud? Everything that makes up WP cloud is engineered, managed and owned by the automatic systems team.
Currently about 30 people. We have a team of six who are focused on integrations with partners, building new features, expanding our APIs and getting the messaging out.
Can you illustrate some short term and long term goals
for this project? In the near term, we are looking for opportunities to work with hosts that share in this vision.
So we can team up and learn from one another. As we embark on this. our long term goal is to empower hosting companies provide the best in class WordPress hosting while ensuring their ability to differentiate themselves with the experience platforms and added services that make them stand. I spend a lot of time talking to hosting companies.
And I can tell you that we are all invested in the success of our shared community being in cooperation. As I like to say, encourages cooperation through programs like five for the future, while competition inspires innovation. If WP cloud can set a higher standard for hosting WordPress websites, we all win everyone from hosting companies to site owners, to visitors of a faster and safer internet.
All
right. I think I caught you. You either practice this answer a ton, or you definitely have this stuff written down. Okay. Last two questions. As a long time product builder, how do you measure success in iterations or particular milestones? I’m
incredibly lucky to be able to work with Barry Abrahamson Jennifer DOD and the rest of the automatic systems teams.
They are WordPress hosting experts located all over the world and bring a great deal of experience and focus to the product. When you work alongside these people, it makes it easy to lean on a vision you believe in, which makes it easy to craft small, but clear goals. And I think that’s what it’s really all about.
It doesn’t matter if you’re designing a new logo, adding a store to a website or building a global cloud platform. Well-crafted goals that support a wider vision is how you iterate on functionality, recruit strong partners and launch new products.
Final question. What else can you tell us about WP cloud?
That’s important to the ecosystem
at large. I can go on about WP cloud, but the value comes from experience. If you are invested in the success of any WordPress website, whether for yourself, your clients, or your host and customer. I would encourage you to sign up for a hosting plan powered by WB cloud and test.
The platform will speak
for itself. Thanks Jesse, for hanging out and telling us about wp.cloud. Thank you. Dearly listener for tuning in. If you didn’t realize that’s, that was an asynchronous podcast interview. I sent some questions over to Jesse and he recorded them, uh, over the weekend. So I do appreciate that, but it wasn’t a live direct to tape podcast.
Uh, if that, uh, if my little inside jokes weren’t telling, if you want to check. wp.cloud and see your favorite benevolent dictator posing in. What I would imagine would be his rockstar slash rolling stones. Cover pose, go to wp.cloud. If you wanna support content like this, it’s buy me a coffee.com/matt report.
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