Wordpress.com Shifts Storage to Amazon S3

WordPress.com, the hosted blogging service operated by the founders of the open source WordPress blogging/CMS system, recently moved all its storage to Amazon's S3 utility storage system, according to founder Matt Mullenweg. WordPress.com has had a lower profile than some other blogging services, but Mullenweg says some metrics now show the service is getting more than 300 million page views and 70 million unique visitors each month.

"We're now using S3 as the primary storage for WordPress.com, rather than just for backups," wrote Mullenweg. But unlike photo hub SmugMug, which says it S3 helped it save more than $1 million over 12 months, Mullenweg says the primary benefit isn't financial. "Our AWS bill went from around $200/mo to $1500/mo, and rising," he writes. "It has simplified some of our requirements, but doesn't look like it'll save any money."

Mullenweg also said Amazon's decision to introduce a Service Level Agreement didn't factor into the decision. "Big companies like (SLAs), but in the real world I've found there to be a low correlation with service reliability and the presence of a SLA."