WordPress powers millions of websites worldwide, making it the go-to CMS for companies and digital projects of all kinds. But scaling WordPress efficiently—especially under high traffic, plugin-heavy setups, or demanding workloads—requires a careful balance of performance, security, and manageability.
This is where the combination of RunCloud panel and OpenLiteSpeed (OLS) comes in, offering one of the most efficient configurations for WordPress environments. It’s also the solution adopted by Color Vivo, who migrated their web infrastructure to Stackscale’s cloud and bare-metal platform, supported by the company’s technical team.
RunCloud and OpenLiteSpeed: a partnership made for WordPress
RunCloud is a modern control panel for cloud and bare-metal servers, designed to manage PHP applications such as WordPress with ease. Its advantage lies in combining simplicity for daily operations with advanced integration with OpenLiteSpeed.
OpenLiteSpeed, meanwhile, is a web server built for efficiency:
- Asynchronous request handling, perfect for traffic spikes.
- Native integration with the LiteSpeed Cache plugin for WordPress, widely regarded as the most effective caching system for the CMS.
- HTTP/3 and QUIC support out of the box, improving mobile and unstable connections.
- Lower resource consumption than Apache or Nginx under similar workloads, thanks to its event-driven architecture.
Together, they provide the foundation for fast, stable, and scalable WordPress hosting.
The case study: Color Vivo
Color Vivo, a digital services and corporate web design firm, faced scalability issues with their previous hosting setup. They needed a platform capable of handling multiple WordPress sites with consistent performance.
They chose Stackscale, a European cloud and bare-metal provider within Grupo Aire, to host their infrastructure. The deployment used bare-metal servers with NVMe disks, managed with Proxmox for flexibility, and configured with RunCloud and OpenLiteSpeed for optimal WordPress performance.
“We needed a solution that could maximize WordPress performance without adding unnecessary complexity to daily operations. RunCloud and OpenLiteSpeed gave us that simplicity, while Stackscale’s infrastructure ensures the power and reliability of a private cloud,” Color Vivo explained.
Fine-tuned for a 24 GB RAM, 12 vCPU NVMe server
Working together, Stackscale’s technical team and Color Vivo created a configuration tailored to a 24 GB RAM, 12 vCPU bare-metal server with NVMe storage. The goal was to fully leverage hardware capacity while ensuring stability and consistent WordPress performance.
Key optimizations included:
- Limiting OpenLiteSpeed workers:
Despite the server having 12 vCPUs, OLS was set to only 2–3 workers. OLS scales through threads, and too many workers can actually waste memory and CPU cycles. - Optimizing connection limits and timeouts:
connTimeoutreduced from 300s to 120s to avoid zombie connections.maxConnectionsandmaxSSLConnectionscapped at 10,000, in line with system capacity.
- Caching and compression improvements:
maxCachedFileSizeraised to 1 MB (from 4 KB).totalInMemCacheSizeincreased to 256 MB,totalMMapCacheSizeto 512 MB.gzipMinFileSizeset to 1 KB to avoid compressing very small files.
- Per-client limits:
Connection limits per client were reduced to 200–400, helping mitigate abuse or small-scale DoS attempts. - TLS and QUIC:
HTTP/3/QUIC remained enabled, with recommendations to add TLS session cache and OCSP stapling in production. - Log optimization:
Log compression was enabled to save disk space.
Comments from Stackscale
For David Carrero Fernández-Baillo, co-founder of Stackscale (Grupo Aire), these kinds of setups show how businesses are moving toward smarter WordPress hosting:
“Combining bare-metal infrastructure with NVMe storage and optimized web servers like OpenLiteSpeed allows businesses to truly unlock the full performance of WordPress. At Stackscale, we see more and more customers choosing alternatives between traditional hosting and public cloud, because here they can control both performance and costs.”
Carrero also highlights the role of RunCloud:
“In the past, companies had to choose between control or ease of use. Today, with RunCloud, an agency or SME can have the best of both worlds: a user-friendly panel with the raw power of a dedicated server.”
The value of expert support
Color Vivo also emphasized Stackscale’s hands-on support during deployment:
“It’s not just about renting a server. What makes Stackscale different is their ability to guide the customer in implementing infrastructure. Their support helped us fine-tune OpenLiteSpeed to our specific needs, and as a result we achieved more than a 40% improvement in WordPress loading times.”
Benefits of this configuration
The deployment validated several advantages:
- Improved load speed: caching and compression tweaks cut WordPress TTFB significantly.
- Stability under load: adjusted workers and connection caps reduced 503 errors.
- Real scalability: bare-metal NVMe servers deliver growth potential without virtualization bottlenecks.
- Simplified management: RunCloud makes advanced infrastructure accessible to non-DevOps teams.
- Stronger security: tighter client limits and log monitoring help detect abusive patterns faster.
Example OpenLiteSpeed config for RunCloud + WordPress
For those looking to replicate a similar setup, here’s a sample configuration file for OpenLiteSpeed on a 24 GB RAM / 12 vCPU NVMe bare-metal server.
👉 Download optimized config file
# Example OpenLiteSpeed config for RunCloud + WordPress
# Optimized for 24 GB RAM / 12 vCPU / NVMe
# Detailed comments included
serverName
httpdWorkers 2
user runcloud-www
group runcloud-www
tuning {
maxConnections 10000
maxSSLConnections 10000
connTimeout 120
maxKeepAliveReq 10000
keepAliveTimeout 5
maxCachedFileSize 1048576
totalInMemCacheSize 256M
maxMMapFileSize 4M
totalMMapCacheSize 512M
enableGzipCompress 1
gzipMinFileSize 1024
quicEnable 1
}
perClientConnLimit {
softLimit 200
hardLimit 400
gracePeriod 15
banPeriod 300
}
Code language: PHP (php)Conclusion
The adoption of RunCloud with OpenLiteSpeed on Stackscale infrastructure shows how companies can achieve high WordPress performance with simplicity and control.
The collaboration between Color Vivo and Stackscale highlights a growing trend: businesses want an optimal mix of technical autonomy, cost-efficiency, and expert support.
As David Carrero puts it:
“Infrastructure is just part of the equation. The real value lies in optimization and expert guidance, ensuring technology works for the business, not the other way around.”
