Does WordPress have any issues running in IPv6-only mode?

  • I have a family web site running on AWS Lightsail in dual IPv4 and IPv6 mode. AWS has made pricing changes to put a premium on this type of configuration, and nudge customers toward using IPv6-only mode. This conversion seems simple enough: create a snapshot of the site, and create a new instance, in IPv6-only mode, from this snapshot. So, the question is this: if I do so, does WordPress have any known issues in running in IPv6-only mode?

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    AFAIK core WP does not deal with IP data of any sort, so no issues. This does not mean certain themes or plugins will have no issues. Even if IP data were used, IPv6 will soon be the way of the world so we’d want to know about any issues that might arise. You’re probably not keen to be a beta tester to find out but a family web site actually wouldn’t be a bad place for beta testing.

    Considering the size of WP’s share of the internet, I’d think quite a few sites are already on IPv6 only. I’ve never seen any issues reported here in the forums, you could try searching the Trac system for related tickets.

    I have a hobby WordPress site on an AWS Lightsail IPv6-only instance. Take note of the following:

    1) The exact numbers vary, but all sources agree that less than 50% of the world is on IPv6. This means that, unless you have a mitigation plan, you may be blocking 50% of your website’s potential visitors. Cloudflare takes care of this for me.

    2) Lightsail’s WordPress “blueprint” (provided by Bitnami) is not compatible with IPv6-only instances… you simply don’t have the option when creating a new instance. So if you installed your site from their WordPress blueprint, then you cannot deploy your snapshot to an IPv6-only instance. I used a minimal Debian 12.5 instance and set up WordPress manually.

    3) www.remarpro.com endpoints like www.remarpro.com, api.www.remarpro.com, downloads.www.remarpro.com, etc are only reachable from IPv4. That means your IPv6-only instance will not be able to communicate with www.remarpro.com for things like updates and theme/plugin downloads. Ditto for 3rd-party plugins that need to phone home to ipv4-only servers.

    I wouldn’t bother with this just to save $2 (or $4 on larger plans).

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • The topic ‘Does WordPress have any issues running in IPv6-only mode?’ is closed to new replies.