I’ve recently set up a couple of WordPress blogs on Azure using the standard WordPress package from the Azure marketplace. Both times the sites have been really slow. The problem appears to be if you configure the database to a different region than the web app. Which is really easy to do because there’s no mySQL available on Australian Azure so you are told to pick the closest, which is SE Asia. Yet by default I always will add web apps onto Australian nodes. I thus wind up with the web app in Australia and the DB in Asia.

I experimented by spinning up a new WordPress with both the web app and database on SE Asia node – significant increase in speed.