Your WordPress starts here
Where is your origin?
Your origin is where your WordPress site lives. It runs your code, manages your content, and handles the work behind every login, cart, and checkout. Choose a home for that work. Our included global CDN brings cached content closer to your visitors around the world.
Keep your WordPress origin close to where you work.
Let our global CDN bring your content to the world.
Saving a draft. Uploading a product image. Updating an order. Your everyday admin work connects back to the origin. A location near you or your team is a useful starting point for keeping that work responsive.
Your origin and CDN work together: WordPress handles publishing, accounts, carts, and checkouts at your origin, while our global CDN serves eligible cached pages, images, and files closer to your audience. Explore our global CDN.
Your site’s resources live here.
Your plan’s dedicated PHP workers and NVMe storage give WordPress the capacity to run your site. Origin location answers where that work happens; your plan determines how much capacity you have.
Your team has a home base.
Start with where you do most of your WordPress work. For a distributed team, consider who uses the admin most often. Distance is a guide; actual network routes also affect response times.
Four origins. Find yours.
Choose Los Angeles, Dallas, Ashburn in Virginia, or Amsterdam when you set up your site.
Los Angeles
California, USA
Dallas
Texas, USA
Ashburn
Virginia, USA
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Where do you do most of your WordPress work?
Enter a US ZIP code or use your location to compare all four origins by distance, with approximate round-trip times.
Choose the recommended location when setting up your site. The finder does not carry your selection into your order.
Your origin is local to your work.
Your reach is global.
Your audience can be anywhere. Our built-in CDN serves eligible cached content from 29 locations around the world, while your origin handles WordPress processing and personalized requests.
For a store with shoppers in another region, personalized traffic matters too. We can help you weigh your team’s location alongside where your customers use the site.
A little geography.
A little network geekery.
Here’s what goes into the origin finder. Open the hood, check the math, and see what those milliseconds actually mean.
First, we measure the distance.
A US ZIP code gives us an approximate location through Zippopotam.us. Or, with your permission, your browser supplies your location. We calculate the shortest distance around the globe to each origin city using the Haversine formula.
That is geographic distance. It does not trace the cables between you and the data center. ZIP codes and origin coordinates represent approximate locations, too.
Then comes the napkin math.
Our model assumes light travels through fiber at roughly 200,000 kilometers per second. A round trip travels the distance twice. We multiply that ideal travel time by three as a rough allowance for indirect routes and network delays.
The multiplier is a rule of thumb, not a measured property of our network. Every origin gets the same multiplier, so the recommendation still follows distance. The calculator does not perform a live speed test.
The internet takes detours.
Cables follow actual routes. Networks exchange traffic at particular places. Your provider, routing, and congestion can change the result. A farther origin can sometimes respond faster, and two origins can be effectively tied.
Use the recommendation as a starting point for choosing where you do most of your WordPress work. The milliseconds are approximate round-trip latency, not download speed or page-load time. WordPress processing and the rest of the page still have work to do.
Curious enough to compare?
WonderNetwork publishes measured city-to-city ping times. They are useful context, but measure connections between their servers, not your connection to PressHarbor. Our current calculator does not use those measurements.
For more on the physics, Cloudflare explains how distance affects internet latency.
Your location stays out of your order.
ZIP lookups are sent to Zippopotam.us, which uses GeoNames data. Browser coordinates stay in the calculator and are not sent to that ZIP service. The finder does not store your location.
When you set up your site, choose your recommended origin yourself. The finder does not automatically carry the choice into your order.
Choose your origin. Make it your own.
Start with Core’s 3 dedicated PHP workers and 25 GB of NVMe storage. Your choice of all four origins is included.
Try Core free for one month