How to Use CDN in WordPress
Websites in the 21st century are increasingly serving rich content to users, thanks to the ever-growing dynamic features. Many sites today run on content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, and this could potentially increase loading time for users requesting for information. Knowledge of how to use CDN in WordPress could help devise strategies to reduce the loading time of these dynamic websites and improve the overall user experience.
A content delivery network often abbreviated as CDN is a globally located network of servers whose design hosts and delivers static or even dynamic content for a WordPress website such as video streams, JavaScript, CSS, and images. CDN servers, sometimes called points of presence (POPs), detect the location of users and route them to the nearest POPs. The three easy-to-implement and straightforward steps below will guide you on how to use CDN in WordPress.
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Choose a reliable CDN provider
Carefully choose a reliable CDN provider and subscribe to their CDN service. Usually, you expect two options when billing either by your data usage or monthly billing. You will get an automatic cost calculator before you purchase a package on the websites of most CDN providers.
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Install a CDN Enabler
Install a CDN Enabler WordPress plugin to integrate your purchased CDN service to your WordPress site. You can purchase a premium CDN plugin or use a plugin like WP Rocket or CDN Enabler for free to automatically link up your site to CDN assets. Today, it is so easy to acquire and deploy a CDN.
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Your site is now delivering content from global CDNs
Once users visit your site, different CDNs from across the world will now load and deliver their content requests. The site will load content from the CDN located in the visitor’s location or nearest to the visitor’s location. Geolocation routing and IP Anycast CDN technologies assist route site visitors to the right location.
WordPress CDN Integration with CDN Enabler
CDN enabler is a WordPress plugin that helps to integrate CDN service in WordPress faster and easily. The plugin links the content on your WordPress site to CDN URLs, which then serve content requests from people visiting your site.
You can use the WordPress CDN Enabler capabilities to exclude some extensions like .php and set up supported directories. You can also easily enable or disable HTTPS connections and relative paths.
After installing and setting up a CDN Enabler, your website will, within minutes, readily deliver cached content from edge servers.
Benefits of WordPress CDN
Now that you know how to use a CDN in WordPress, here is how it can benefit you and your site visitors:
WordPress CDN is faster and cheaper
You can use a free WordPress CDN. If you seek optimal performance, you can settle for a paid service CDN from the many available in the WordPress directory.
Check the compatibility of the plugin before you purchase a CDN paid service.
Using a WordPress CDN will save you the additional cost of buying new or upgrading existing CPU and RAM resources.
Faster loading speed
Improving the speed of your website by serving visitors with instant assets is one of the significant advantages of a WordPress CDN.
As the CDN servers respond to content requests by loading content from the CDN nearest to the user, it can improve user experience.
As you implement your CDN, ensure your site has clean code, you chose a host with excellent capabilities, and have your server configuration on point.
By making some assets on your site load faster, a CDN improves the load speed of your site and is therefore worth considering.
WordPress is home of CDNs
The CDN file structure is simple and easy to integrate into WordPress. Moreover, you can browse the WordPress Directory for many CDN plugins and pick one to implement your CDN. You can use WordPress caching plugins (there are many) to integrate a CDN. Interestingly, caching plugins will also help you to optimize your website, making it even faster.
Effectively share your content with the world
The Internet is driving the world. People are in constant search for content from wherever they can get it around the globe.
Using CDN servers will help you overcome geographical barriers and make your content available to a global audience. The higher the global reach, the higher the chances of your site’s growth. The coverage of your provider will define your geographical coverage.
The performance of CDNs might vary from one region to another and could be more advantageous in some regions.
Pros and Cons of Using CDN for WordPress Website
Pros of Using CDN for WordPress Website
- Support for Cached Resources. Using a CDN for a WordPress website supports the caching of static site resources and can instantly serve them to a user.
- Increased Site Uptime. The rate of losing data packets is lower when using a CDN provider with an optimized website hosting service matching the fail-over, capacity, and scalability of CDN.
- Enable multiple requests. Browsers allow only four active user requests for content from a specific site and queues the rest. CDN supports multiple requests reducing the loading time and queue time of content.
Cons of Using CDN for WordPress Website
No Content Optimization. Since CDN hosted libraries load entire content libraries even for a unique request from a resource, they do not optimize your site. It might be necessary to adjust the resource for optimization purposes.
- Vulnerabilities in Public CDN services. Using publicly available CDN services might pose security threats to your site. Alterations to JavaScripts hosted remotely can increase the susceptibility of user data.
- Server Timeouts. You can do as little as waiting if CDN server data centers are down. Alternatively, writing a fail-over logic can search local servers for available resources.
Looking to benefit from fast content delivery for your WordPress website? Contact BelugaCDN today for more information on our global WordPress content delivery network.
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