Hi, I’m Ashley. I’m a developer, creator, and systems administrator.

I’m based in Staffordshire, England, where I live with my fiancée Emily, daughter Harriet, and our dog, Teddy.

For the last 10 years, I’ve spent much of my time building software for the WordPress ecosystem. I’ve contributed to WordPress core, helped build some of the most loved WordPress plugins, such as WP Offload Media, and led the development of SpinupWP – a modern server control panel.

I have a strong background in systems administration, having served in the Royal Air Force, where I was responsible for implementing and maintaining computer systems classified above secret.

After leaving the Royal Air Force, my focus has been on empowering businesses to host WordPress on their own servers. Having worked on all levels of the software stack, from a network level down to the codebase, I know what’s required to serve WordPress lightning-fast and securely.

I have a wealth of experience in WordPress performance, security, debugging complex server issues, and scaling WordPress. If you need help with a WordPress problem, I can help.

Ashley Rich signature

Projects

  1. DeploymentHawk

    Jan 2023 - Present

    DeploymentHawk

    The all-in-one site deployment monitoring tool. Built using Laravel, Inertia.js and Vue.js.

  2. ReplyBox

    Jun 2019 - Apr 2022

    ReplyBox

    A privacy-focused comment system built using Laravel and Vue.js. Acquired 2022.

  3. WP Queue

    Oct 2017 - Apr 2018

    WP Queue

    A WordPress library for queueing jobs that are processed in the background.

  4. WP Background Processing

    Jan 2016 - Feb 2018

    WP Background Processing

    A WordPress library for handling non-blocking async requests and background processing.

Writing

I’m the original author of How to Install WordPress on Ubuntu 22.04 and Speed Up Your Sites – the most comprehensive guide to hosting WordPress yourself. I’m super proud of this series, which ultimately led to the development of SpinupWP.

Over the years, I’ve also written a bunch of articles on development, performance, and caching:

  1. Laravel Multi-Region Queues with Horizon
  2. Best Ways to Encrypt Passwords, Keys, & More with PHP in 2022
  3. Is a Load Balancer Overkill in Your WordPress Hosting Setup?
  4. Top 3 WordPress Cache Plugins and How to Turbocharge Them with Nginx
  5. WordPress Caching: All You Need To Know
  6. Varnish vs Nginx FastCGI Cache: Which is Best for WordPress?
  7. Full Page Caching With Personalized Dynamic Content
  8. The WordPress Developer’s Guide to ES2015 (ES6)
  9. Microcaching WordPress in Nginx to Improve Server Requests by 2,400%
  10. Performance Best Practices in the HTTP/2 Era
  11. Finding Bottlenecks in WordPress Code
  12. A CDN Isn’t a Silver Bullet for Performance
  13. How to do Background Processing in WordPress Plugins and Themes