Azure is increasingly becoming the scalable CMS platform with support for a host of popular CMS providers via the marketplace. The list already includes some of the big names in the CMS industry, like Umbraco, Kentico, Joomla, and DNN.

The most recent addition to this list is WordPress. It is very simple to create a WordPress website. Go to the Azure Preview Portal and click New to go to the Gallery. Select Web from the navigation pane and you will see Scalable WordPress listed as one of the options (along with other options such as Umbraco and Zoomla).

Scalable WordPress uses Azure Storage by default to store site content. This automatically allows you to use Azure CDN for the media content that you want to use in your WordPress website.

Once you select Scalable WordPress, you will be redirected to the website configuration pane, where you can specify the name of the website, the database and the storage configuration settings. You are all set!

Login to your WordPress site dashboard to configure plug-ins like Jetpack. Jetpack, formerly available with WordPress.com, is now also available with Scalable WordPress. Your WordPress CMS site hosted in Azure can now support millions of visits and scale on demand. The Azure WordPress CMS website will support auto-scale out of the box. You can also enable backup and restore features available with Azure websites for your CMS site. It will also support publishing of content from stage to production.