A new post on the Interoperability team blog outlines a use case showcasing a new plugin for WordPress that enables users to use Windows Azure Storage Service to host media for a WordPress powered blog. The plugin, developed by Microsoft, is now available as an open source project from the WordPress repository.

Register for your Windows Azure account (try for free till July 31, 2010 with the Introductory Special), install the plugin, and get started!

Additional links

• Installing WordPress on Windows with the Web Platform Installer: https://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/WordPress.aspx
• Running WordPress on Windows with SQL Server:
• Windows Azure SDK for PHP:

About Windows Azure Storage

Windows Azure Storage enables applications to store and manipulate large objects and files in the cloud via blobs, manipulate service state via tables, and provide reliable delivery of messages using queues. You can read more about Windows Azure Storage here.

If you want to manage your media (images or any file offered for download) in a consistent way and share them across multiple websites then you might want to consider using Windows Azure Storage blobs. Windows Azure includes a service called Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) which offers developers a solution for delivering high-bandwidth content. Windows Azure CDN has currently 18 locations globally (United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America). Windows Azure CDN caches your Windows Azure blobs at strategically placed locations to provide maximum bandwidth for delivering your content to users. The benefit of using a CDN is better performance and experience for users who are farther from the source of the content stored in the Windows Azure Storage blobs.  You can read more on MSDN here.