A Deep Dive Into Serverless, Advanced WordPress Development, and Ymir with Carl Alexander

In this Within WordPress podcast episode, I talk to Carl Alexander, a WordPress developer from Canada. Carl shares his journey with WordPress, starting from when he got hired as a WordPress developer in 2008. He talks about his involvement in the WordPress community, including organizing events and speaking at WordCamps. Carl also mentions his book on object-oriented programming for WordPress and his current project, Ymir, which is a serverless WordPress solution. The main focus of the podcast is on serverless WordPress and its benefits for scaling WordPress sites. Carl explains that serverless architecture abstracts the need to manage servers, allowing developers to focus on writing code. He discusses the challenges of scaling WordPress, particularly for applications with spiky, non-cacheable traffic, such as e-commerce sites and e-learning platforms. Carl highlights the advantages of serverless WordPress, including the ability to elastically scale compute resources and the potential for building innovative WordPress products. However, Carl acknowledges that serverless WordPress is not a one-size-fits-all solution and may not be suitable for all use cases. He mentions the complexity of cloud infrastructure and the need for developers to understand serverless concepts. Carl also discusses the limitations of serverless WordPress, such as latency issues and plugin compatibility. Overall, this episode provides insights into the world of serverless WordPress and the challenges and opportunities it presents for developers and hosting companies.