Install WordPress on Microsoft Azure PaaS

I have been hosting this blog on WP Engine for a couple of years and my experience has been fantastic.  A while back, I explored moving my blog to Azure, but in order to have the same high-availability that WP Engine offered, I would be required to construct a load-balanced WordPress IaaS implementation - installing, configuring and managing the WordPress app environment and the MySQL database (VMs, load balancers, firewalls, etc.).  Additionally, I could have chosen to use ClearDB as the MySQL provider.  But, all in all, creating a linux-based high-availability environment would be considerably expensive.

Just recently, Microsoft released two new features in Azure - Azure Service Plan on Linux and Azure Database for MySQL Server.  These two components allow me to run a full PaaS implementation of WordPress.  Continue to read to learn how to install WordPress on a Microsoft Azure PaaS environment.

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