Kick-Ass Wordpress Optimization

So you want to know about WordPress Optimization? Well I've scoured the web (and continue to do so frequently) for ways to optimize the various Wordpress blogs that I run.  While I can't claim to be the source of all knowledge on this topic, I can tell you what has worked well for me and how I run all of my blogs (some have seen upwards of 60K visits in a day!) on a single server and don't lose a second of sleep over it.

I'll be splitting this post into several parts mostly because I just can't bring myself to put this all into one giant monotonous post.  What I will do for you though is cover topics from start-to-finish that I'll bring down so even the average blogger can setup, run, and optimize their server all on their own.  Yes this sounds daunting, but honestly, this is great knowledge and gets you out from under the thumb of your terrible hosting provider you have now.

From start-to-finish, this definitive guide will be covering the following over the next few weeks:

1. Getting Started (What You Need)
   1. Domain Name
   2. A Good Server or Host
2. Setting Up Your First Server
   1. Why anyone can do this!
   2. Virtual Servers - WTF is a Virtual Server and Where Do I Get One?
   3. Size and Speed Considerations
   4. Server Operating Systems - What I recommend.
   5. Accessing Your Server
   6. Important Linux Commands
   7. File Editing - The Basics
   8. Security Considerations - How to Lock-It-Down
3. Setting up a Web Server
   1. nginx - Because I won't be covering Apache.
   2. General nginx Configuration
   3. Installing PHP
      1. PHP-FPM
      2. Tuning PHP-FPM
      3. Installing PHP Modules
   4. Configuring Your Website on Nginx
      1. Generic Configuration Files
      2. Your Domain Configuration
4. Configuring CloudFlare as Your DNS Provider
   1. Setting Up CloudFlare
      1. Create CloudFlare Account
      2. Importing/Adding your DNS
      3. Configuring Your DNS for your Server
5. Installing and Configuring WordPress
   1. Installing MySQL and Configuring Your Database
      1. Tuning MySQL for WordPress
      2. Creating a Database
      3. Creating a User
      4. Granting your User Permission to Use Your Database
   2. Installing and Configuring WordPress
      1. Downloading WordPress
      2. Configuring WordPress
      3. Updating WordPress
   3. Important Wordpress Plugins
      1. Jetpack (Strapping In)
      2. Search Engine Optimization (Get Indexed)
      3. Performance (Speeding Up)
      4. Compression (Making it Smaller)
      5. Structured Data (Making it Readable)
6. Caching Your Website
   1. What the Hell is Caching anyway?
   2. The Benefits of Caching
   3. Caching Methods
      1. W3 Total Cache
         1. Memcached
         2. PHP APC Opcode
         3. Disk Caching
         4. Hooking into CloudFlare
            1. Optimizing Static File Delivery
      2. Using Varnish to Reduce Server Load and Page Response Times
         1. Installing Varnish
         2. Configuring Varnish
         3. Re-configuring nginx for Varnish
         4. Securing Varnish
         5. Tuning Varnish
      3. Using Redis to Cache Wordpress [Advanced]
         1. Installing Redis
         2. Configuring Redis
         3. Tuning Redis
         4. WP-Redis
7. Tuning Your Server
   1. Managing Memory
      1. nginx
      2. mysql
      3. php-fpm
      4. memcached
      5. redis
      6. varnish
   2. Scaling Up
8. Getting Into The Search Engines
   1. Google Webmaster Tools
   2. Bing Webmaster Tools
   3. Google Analytics

Stay tuned as these will be turned into seven (well, 8 including the getting started bit) individual posts so you can get that WordPress site configured and running like a lean-mean-blogging-machine in no time!