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Depending on the method used to activate a plugin, it will hook into the WordPress load order at different points. Plugins will load based on the following hooks—from earliest to latest in the WordPress load process—when activated with the described methods:
On the VIP Platform the /mu-plugins directory is not directly accessible, and will not appear in a site’s code repository. Instead, plugins can be loaded as MU (“must use”) plugins by adding them to the /client-mu-plugins directory found in the root of a site’s code repository. The /client-mu-plugins directory works similarly to WP_CONTENT_DIR . '/mu-plugins/' in a self-hosted WordPress installation.
The /plugins directory is mapped to /wp-content/plugins/ ; this directory works similarly to WP_CONTENT_DIR . '/plugins/' in a self-hosted WordPress installation.
Themes and plugins can only be installed, updated, or deleted via the application’s wpcomvip GitHub repository; they cannot be installed, updated, or deleted in the WordPress Admin dashboard.
For various reasons, some functions in WordPress Core are purposely uncached. Because of this, calling those uncached functions in application code will always result in an SQL query. This can have performance implications for a site, particularly if an uncached function is called by code during a high traffic event. A large volume of direct SQL queries can overload the primary database and lead to an increase in responses with a 503 HTTP status code.
Each WordPress environment is provisioned with its own siloed Memcached cluster for persistently caching application-level data. The WordPress object cache (and transients) is automatically configured to use these instances. This enables common operations to be automatically routed to memory instead of the database.
Responsive images are automatically supported by WordPress Core. Image markup will automatically include srcset and sizes attributes for images uploaded to a WordPress site’s Media Library. These attributes enable web browsers to automatically use and display the most suitable image size based on a device’s screen size.
By default, a set of alternate sizes are generated for images that are uploaded to a site’s WordPress media library. These alternate sizes are referred to as “intermediate images”. WordPress Core defines a default array of intermediate image sizes: thumbnail, medium, medium_large, and large. The pixel dimensions for each of these default sizes can be defined in the Settings –> Media screen of the WordPress Admin dashboard.
Default behavior of image files (e.g., jpg, png, gif) that are located in a site’s /uploads/ directory, served by the VIP File System:
The system temp directory (/tmp) is a local, writeable path on an application’s web servers on the VIP Platform. The /tmp directory is most commonly used to perform local manipulations to temporary files. For example, transferring a ZIP archive to /tmp, extracting its contents, then uploading the contents to the WordPress site’s wp-content/uploads/ directory on the VIP File System.