[Eric]

Everyone is throwing these terms around lately but what is the difference, is “stack” just a fancy name talking about web hosting?

[Alexis]

not the same thing.

Web stack is talking about the “layers” in your website technology, for example the hardware, the OS of your server, and the other apps installed on your server like Apache/Nginx etc.

https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/server/know-how/web-stacks-the-basics-and-examples/

[Brenda]

Hosting is talking about the company or service that is managing your WordPress site. Every web host is going to have their own favorite “stack” they use.

old-fashioned shared hosting is usually on Apache servers with cPanel.

modern “hosting” might not be a traditional service provider… more common is using cloud servers that are only semi-managed these days and probably don’t have control panels installed to keep the pricing cheaper and performances/security better.

[Zachary]

SlickStack is a free “stack” installation tool for WordPress that uses Nginx and is designed for modern (cheap) cloud servers that use KVM virtualization.

If you use a script like SS, you can achieve both a very fast stack, and also fast hosting because you no longer need another web host:

Fastest WordPress Hosting (For Under $5/mo)

[Edward]

modern “hosting” might not be a traditional service provider… more common is using cloud servers that are only semi-managed these days and probably don’t have control panels

This is why DevOps is becoming more important 😀

DevOps As-A-Service the future of web hosting approach

[Timothy]

yup.

[Rachel]

Fastest WordPress hosting = choose a KVM server that is CPU optimized and has NVMe SSD disk and install SlickStack, my favorite is Vultr and DigitalOcean right now.

[Janet]

Web Hosting

many good KVM cloud providers to choose from.

[Christina]

what about fastest ISP? fastest datacenter? fastest undersea cables? fastest browser and device?

[Cheryl]

Everyone talks about LEMP stack or Litespeed, OLS Openlitespeed. But LAMP Apache stack is still very solid and speed is very good these days also fyi

[Emma]

how much does the CPU and disk storage type matter for speed

[Amy]

“Stack” is just meaning the layers of software you installed on the server. This is the fastest stack for WordPress servers:

- Cloudflare (fastest DNS service)
- Ubuntu LTS
- Nginx + FastCGI cache
- PHP-FPM + OPcache
- MySQL/MariaDB
- Redis (for object cache)
- UFW firewall (included w/ Ubuntu)
- OpenSSL or Certbot/Lets Encrypt (if you use Cloudflare try OpenSSL… amazing time saver)
- WP-CLI
- Git (if you need it)
-Composer (if you need it)

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fastest-wordpress-stack/

[Michael]

good thread

[Judy]

“Install the Fastest, Most Optimized WordPress Stack” from Linux Stans also mentioned SlickStack script.

[Alexander]

All roads lead to SlickStack ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Thomas]

theoretically, adding Varnish layer to SlickStack could be even faster.

[Russell]

Litespeed faster than SlickStack / Nginx or not

[Mason]

Varnish is too complicated and can introduce instability and more maintenance into your stack, plus it can conflict with dynamic CMS like WordPress. I have seen clients using e.g. Cloudways Varnish caching having problems in their WooCommerce for example, or their WP Admin is acting goofy.

The same is true for Litespeed’s LS cache, they are both output caches.

[Nicole]

According to Slickstack, stability is more important than speed anyways…

[Tyler]

Location matters a lot. This is not talked about much. If you are using web hosting nearby your users (in the same city) the speed can improve a lot. But, using cheap shared hosting means the performance is unreliable.

[Lawrence]

What stack does WordPress use

WordPress requires PHP, but can run on most major web servers including Apache, Nginx, Caddy, Litespeed, and Lighttpd. It can use a localhost SQL database or remote database server (configured via wp-config settings).

[Christine]

I have never seen anyone talk about Lighttpd for WP…

[Frank]

very fast installation also, SlickStack.

Fastest WordPress Setup with SlickStack: A Detailed Installation Guide

[Margaret]

SlickStack ftw

[Author]

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