What the managed WordPress stack includes
The layers between a visitor and your database, and which of them you can change.
Every WordPress site runs the same stack. Knowing the order of the layers makes most performance and caching questions answer themselves.
The path of a request
- Cloudflare edge
DDoS protection, the WAF and static asset caching, in the data centre nearest the visitor.
- Full-page cache
Cached HTML is returned without touching PHP. Logged-in users, carts and checkout bypass it.
- PHP-FPM
WordPress runs here. OPcache holds compiled code between requests.
- Object cache
Redis keeps query results and transients in memory, which is what keeps admin screens quick.
- MariaDB
The database, tuned to the plan's memory and with the slow query log available to support.
What you can change
- PHP version and a small set of directives: memory limit, upload size, max execution time.
- Page cache behaviour: purge, exclusions, and the time to live.
- Whether the object cache is on. It is on by default and should stay on.
- Automatic updates for core, plugins and themes.
Do not install WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, LiteSpeed Cache or similar. They duplicate the platform cache and the two layers then disagree about what is current. Optimisation plugins that only touch images or CSS are fine.