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Learn about the nuances and benefits of content delivery networks, and what options WordPress site owners have.
As fast as your website is, it never seems to be quite fast enough. Users across the globe demand content instantly, or they’ll go elsewhere. Search engines want to provide users with results that are relevant and fast for a good experience. So speed becomes a ranking factor.
There is no magic solution for this, but one option can address and improve it: a content delivery network.
Web hosting and backend management can quickly become complex. As a result, it’s easy to glaze over concepts like CDNs and wonder whether your website really needs them.
The short answer: yes. Once you understand the nuances and benefits of content delivery networks, you’ll understand exactly why that’s the case.
In the simplest terms, a CDN is a system of multiple servers (usually known as POPs, or points of presence) throughout the world.
They hold some of your website’s static data. Users who are close to one of these servers can load your website more quickly. Receiving static and non-changing information from the CDN. While more dynamic, real-time content still comes from your central web host.
That last part is crucial. A CDN does not replace your central website host. Instead, it adds to its services by caching the more static information, storing it locally. Then sharing it with users who are physically close to its geographically distributed servers.
Let’s explore that process through an example:
Your web host may be located in the UK. If an American user tries to access your website with no CDN in place, they’ll need to wait for data to cross the Atlantic for the website to load.
With a CDN in place, the website’s static data (like core homepage images, text, etc.) will come much faster from a server in the US, while the real-time information gets added from the central web host.
The natural use case for a CDN is a website with users distributed across multiple countries and continents. Much like we described in the example above. At the same time, their use also extends beyond this obvious scenario.
Generally speaking, the same thing applies across your user base. Anytime you have potential customers or other members of your target audience visiting your website from outside the physical location of your website host, a CDN probably makes sense.
Traffic surges from across the globe, due to business growth or content becoming more popular than expected, are more well-distributed on servers across the globe.
The only scenario in which a CDN would not be beneficial for your website, is if your users are reliably local to your website host. If you know that information, staying with a single host will make more sense.
But with the vast majority of business websites, that information is difficult to predict, meaning they would likely benefit from having a CDN in place.
Integrating a CDN into your WordPress or WooCommerce site’s management strategy is beneficial in more ways than one:
We know that in eCommerce, pages that take between 0 and 2 seconds to load have the highest conversion rates. While for non-eCommerce pages, conversion rates decrease by more than 4% for every second of load time added.
As mentioned above, a CDN can improve both your individual site speed and the reliability of that speed for users. Regardless of their location. It does this by reducing the distance the information has to travel to be displayed on their screen.
Sometimes things go wrong, servers go down or become overwhelmed by requests. A CDN can stop this from disrupting service for your users.
Naturally they help to balance server load, by distributing content from disparate servers depending on user location. In the event of a server going down, failover kicks in, allowing a backup server to takeover.
It means that your users can still be served your content from one of the other servers in the network. At least until the failed server is restored.
The right CDN can help to mitigate the chances of DDoS attacks bringing down your website. Some provide other improvements and optimisations to protect your website. Such as the addition of SSL certificates, so that your cached content is served through HTTPS.
Some of the most popular and successful WordPress CDN providers include analytics reports. These can help you better understand your website and its users. That includes information on your audience, including where your traffic is coming from.
The quality of your service data, and even diagnostics that help you understand and improve your site’s security.
Combine these benefits, and you get one overarching advantage – user experience. Through improved site speed, security, and reliability, you can build a website that better serves your users, and more effectively in the long run.
We’ve looked at the basic use case and advantages of a CDN. Now let’s look into some of the specific options available for WordPress websites.
The great news is that there are lots of CDN options available for WordPress, Multisite, and WooCommerce websites. From numerous reliable providers. It can be quite overwhelming going through all of the options available, but here are a few of our favourites.
Bunny is fast becoming one of the best and highest rated WordPress CDNs on the market. For good reason. It’s affordable, easy to set up, has a great plugin, and plays well with various WordPress caching services.
It has 119 POPs across the globe for reliability regardless of location. Bunny has fast become our favourite CDN, and we include it in our WordPress Support plans.
You may already use the WP Rocket caching tool. They also happen to have a CDN, although since originally writing this article, their CDN services are now powered by Bunny CDN.
Cloudflare is free for small businesses, but this is with very limited features. Their paid plans are more feature packed, and then they have extra features which can be purchased as add-ons individually.
We like some of its security features, particularly the “I am under attack” feature that analyses traffic on your behalf.
Alongside their security solutions, Sucuri also offer a CDN as part of their solution. You can use this one (which does have fewer POPs than some in the list), or alternatively, their security solution plays well with other CDNs, so you can use one of your choice.
With POPs in around 80 locations across 6 continents, Fastly has great global coverage. They offer a range of packages for businesses of different sizes and different delivery needs.
The more expensive packages, offering more features. They also offer a free trial for businesses wanted to see what their CDN is like.
With servers focused on Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific, this choice is only relevant for some global audiences. Although they are expanding their coverage, with over 50 POPs and several more planned. It provides excellent flexibility through its pay-as-you-go plans, charging based on website traffic rather than a fixed rate.
Ultimately, of course, the best WordPress CDN will depend on your individual business needs. As always, performing thorough research can help to find a provider that makes sense for your situation.
Implemented the right way, CDN can play a powerful role in your website’s speed, security, and user experience. Of course their complexity may also be scary for some businesses not familiar with the nuances of backend site management.
That’s where we come in. Implementing and managing a CDN is part of our managed hosting infrastructure, which is included in our WordPress Support plans.
See how migrating to our hosting environment gave Automation Logic significant and immediate performance and speed gains.
Ready to learn more? Contact us to learn how we can help you ensure your website is ready for all of your users, wherever they might be.
If you’d like to learn more about our WordPress & WooCommerce Support & Maintenance plans, drop us an email or give James a call.
Our plans provide a holistic solution to your website’s performance, reliability and security, and are inclusive of premium tools and services.
