Upload Content To Azure Container, CDN In WordPress Folder Format

Table of contents

Introduction

Here, in this article, we are going to a see how we can upload content to our Azure container in our CDN storage, in a WordPress folder format. You may be thinking what is so special in WordPress folder format; what makes it different from other formats? When I say WordPress folder format, I mean one folder in an another folder. In WordPress, we usually have the structure as wwwroot/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/. The real problem is, we can not create a container inside a container. Yeah, you heard it right. But, you don’t need to worry about it, there are always a few ways, in which, we can achieve this need. In this post, I am going to show you how. I hope, you will like this. Now, let’s begin. You can always see this article in my blog here.

Background

I recently created an Azure CDN for my website, and when I was just trying to upload the files to my Azure storage, I got stuck with the problem, that we can not create a container inside a container.

No option to upload a container inside a container

If it is possible, changing URLs of my entire images and other contents would have been pretty much easier, hope you know what I mean. We could have just uploaded the root folder and change the main URL to our CDN endpoint. In my case, change the URL http://sibeeshpassion.com/ to http://cdn.sibeeshpassion.com/ could fix the issues, and with some plugins, we can easily do that.

In this post, we are going to see two possible solution we can use.

Use “/” in the Azure blob
Upload the folders via tools like Storage Explorer

Use “/” in the Azure blob

One good thing here is that we can always create virtual folders by having the “/” character as a delimiter/part of the blob name to build the hierarchy we need. In our case, it is wwwroot/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/. Though the Blob service in Azure storage is based on flat storage scheme, not a hierarchical scheme, still we can specify a character or string delimiter within a blob name to create a virtual hierarchy. For example, we can always create unique blobs as preceding

/SibeeshPassion.png
/2017/01//SibeeshPassion.png
/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/SibeeshPassion.png

You can follow this post for getting more information abut this.

Upload the folders via tools like Storage Explorer

This step is much easier than the above mentioned way. Here, we are going use the tools like Storage Explorer to do the task for us. Uploading each content manually and renaming them in hierarchical format would be a tough task. Am I right? If you are having around 20-50 images or contents in your site, that won’t be a problem. But my case was a bit different, as I had around 5000 images and other content, so I personally selected this method.

To get started, you will have to download the tool Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer. Once you download, please install it and open it.

Now, add your Azure account in Storage Explorer.

Add Account in Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer

Once you add your account, the tool will list down all of your storage and resources you have with that account. Now go to your storage account and create a container. Let’s create and name our container as wp-content.

Creating a BLOB Container

Now what is pending from our end is, uploading the folders. Let’s create one sample folder with one image.

Files and Folders to Upload

Now click on the upload button and select the root folder you need to upload.

Select the Folder to be Uploaded

Once you are done uploading, I am sure that you can see those files in your storage account. Please note that it follows the same hierarchy we needed.

Select the Uploaded Files

Now if you just copy the file URL and open it in the browser, you can see the content you have just uploaded.

Please note that the default access policy of a container is private, thus you will not be able to load the contents via browser. Most probably you will be getting a 404 error. To fix this you will have to change the access policy wither to blob or container. You can follow this post: Fix For 404 ResourceNotFound Error After Uploading to Azure Container

Just for your reference you can always login to your Azure portal and check the blob, there you can find the hierarchical blob.

Hierarchy Folder Structure in Azure Storage Container

Thanks for reading! I will come back with another article which explores Azure CDN.

Conclusion

Did I miss anything that you may think is needed? DId you find this post useful? I hope you liked this article. Please share me your valuable suggestions and feedback.

Your turn. What do you think?

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