Farewell to Slowness: Experience Sharing on Migrating WordPress from InfinityFree to Oracle Cloud

Like many people, when setting up a personal website, I started with a free hosting service. I was no exception, initially choosing InfinityFree (IF) as my WordPress hosting platform. However, after a month of use, I deeply understood the meaning of "free is the most expensive."

Why Leave InfinityFree?

After using InfinityFree for a month, I encountered the following issues:

1. Slow page loading speed, severely affecting browsing experience
2. Unstable server response time
3. Frequent connection timeouts during peak hours

These problems not only affected readers' experience but also made managing the admin dashboard quite frustrating.

Was Leaving InfinityFree Easy?

Although I previously thought migrating WordPress would be easy using All In One WP Migration plugin, in reality, I found that even with just over ten articles and a total size of about 80MB, the backup export kept failing. I eventually had to manually rebuild all articles, which took an entire workday.

Why Choose Oracle Cloud?

While looking for alternatives, Oracle Cloud caught my attention again:

1. Permanent free tier offers:
   • 2 AMD virtual machines
   • 4 ARM virtual machines
   • 24GB boot disk space
   • 10TB monthly outbound traffic
2. Stable performance and fast speed
3. Full root access support
4. Freedom to install needed software environments

Detailed Installation Steps

I mainly referenced Oracle's official WordPress setup documentation.You can also refer to the somewhat outdated video below, but note that if there are discrepancies between the documentation and video, follow the official documentation.

1. Basic Environment Setup

sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install apache2 -y
sudo apt install mysql-server -y
sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql php-mbstring -y

Note: Installing php-mbstring is particularly important, which isn't mentioned in the official documentation but is needed by many WordPress plugins.

2. MySQL Configuration

Follow the official documentation and video exactly.

3. Creating WordPress Database

Follow the official documentation and video exactly.

4. Installing WordPress

The normal process for installing the English version is as follows：
wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar -xvf latest.tar.gz
sudo cp -R wordpress /var/www/html/
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/wordpress
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/wordpress

However, this is how you can install a traditional Chinese version:
sudo apt-get install unzip
wget https://tw.wordpress.org/wordpress-6.7-zh_TW.zip
unzip wordpress-6.7-zh_TW.zip
sudo cp -R wordpress /var/www/html/
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/wordpress
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/wordpress

5. Applying for HTTPS SSL Certificate

To use HTTPS connections, besides the Oracle Cloud settings shown in the video, we need to set up SSL certificates:

1. First set up DNS

2. Install Certbot on VM

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache

3. Apply for and install certificate

sudo certbot –apache

Conclusion

While InfinityFree is fine as an entry choice, Oracle Cloud is worth considering if you want a better user experience. The combination of being free without sacrificing performance is truly valuable.