Onboarding WordPress VIP Go

I recently helped migrate a client into WordPress.com VIP Go enterprise hosting. This hosting is for larger sites with hosting budgets starting around $25,000 per year. It’s an opinionated platform that applies perhaps the greatest degree of WordPress management available.

Here’s notes I took on the process:

• Features a nice, clean control panel with:
  • Download database and Media backup sets
  • Plugin updater (automated GIT branches, pull requests, deployments)
    • Plugins indicate when they need updates within WP Admin (readonly).
  • View code merges and deployments across the web nodes (2-3 minute deploys).
  • Audit log and WP-CLI log
• Use command-line NPM to install the VIP-CLI service onto your workstation.
  • Use to import Media Library file sets and Database sets.
  • Use to run WP-CLI commands.
• There are restrictions on media file types and locations.
  • Thumbnail image files are not imported.
  • Thumbnails are served from a different URL structure, which breaks plugins that bypass core functions.
• Distributed web nodes have a read-only filesystem.
  • See list of incompatible plugins, mostly those that try to write their own caches and log files.
    • Including some page builders Divi and Elementor (workarounds available)
• Code gets reviewed.
  • Use GIT branches to commit changes cleanly.
• Cloudflare and reverse proxy services require extra configurations, consider removing these.

For more details on WordPress VIP, see their latest updates.