WordPress with AWS Autoscaling and EntraID

A multinational client required a secure, scalable, high-performance WordPress platform to serve both internal and external audiences. The system had to handle variable traffic loads, integrate with enterprise authentication via Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) for SSO, and support a fully customized PHP-based theme tailored to the company's brand and accessibility standards.

The solution was architected on AWS using EC2 Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), and CloudFront CDN, ensuring reliability and optimal performance across global regions.

Objectives

• Create a custom WordPress theme with reusable PHP components for flexible content management.
• Implement enterprise-level authentication with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD).
• Achieve 99.9% uptime with automatic scaling under high traffic conditions.
• Enable secure access and fast global delivery of web resources.

Challenges

Authentication Integration: WordPress's native user management needed to be replaced with Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on to comply with internal IT policies.

Scalability: The site had to handle unpredictable traffic spikes during product launches and internal announcements.

Stateful Architecture: Managing sessions and uploads in an Auto Scaling environment required shared storage and consistent state management across instances.

Performance: Static resources and dynamic content needed to remain fast and cachable despite backend complexity.

Solution

Architecture

The infrastructure was deployed on AWS using:

• EC2 Auto Scaling Group: Automatically adjusts the number of instances based on CPU and network metrics.
• Elastic Load Balancer (ELB): Evenly distributes traffic and ensures fault tolerance.
• EFS (Elastic File System): Shared persistent storage for /wp-content/uploads, ensuring consistency across EC2 instances.
• RDS (MySQL): Managed database with backups and high availability.
• CloudFront CDN: Global resource distribution with reduced latency.
• Route 53: DNS management with health checks and failover.

Custom Theme Development

A fully customized PHP theme was developed:

• Modular templating similar to Blade for maintainability
• Custom post types and ACF fields for structured and flexible content
• Performance-optimized PHP hooks with minimal plugin usage
• REST API integrations for headless and internal applications

Single Sign-On with Entra ID

SSO was implemented using OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect:

• Users authenticate via Microsoft's login page
• WordPress receives a JWT and maps user roles
• Permissions centrally managed in Entra ID

This ensured security compliance while providing seamless access for employees.

Results

• 99.98% uptime in the first six months
• 46% faster page load globally with CloudFront
• Seamless SSO for all internal users
• 32% cost reduction through Auto Scaling and CDN optimization
• Reduced maintenance thanks to centralized logging and CloudFormation IaC

Tech Stack

CategoryTools / Technologies

Frontend

PHP, HTML5, Bootstrap 5, JavaScript

Backend

WordPress (Custom Theme), PHP 8.x

Infrastructure

AWS EC2, Auto Scaling, EFS, RDS, CloudFront, Route 53, ELB

Authentication

Microsoft Entra ID (OAuth 2.0 / OIDC)

CI/CD

GitHub Actions, AWS CodeDeploy

Monitoring

CloudWatch, AWS Logs, UptimeRobot

Key Takeaways

This project demonstrated that WordPress can operate as an enterprise-grade CMS when backed by cloud-native scalability and modern authentication. The final architecture offers a high-performance, compliant, and flexible environment, proving that PHP platforms can excel in a DevOps ecosystem.