How a CDN Makes Your WordPress Blog More Powerful
A CDN is a Content Delivery Network, sometimes called a Content Distribution Network. This is a service that stores content such as files and images, making your site run faster and more efficiently. People who visit your site will be able to get your content delivered to them from the server that’s closest to them. There are both free CDNs and services that charge a fee. Let’s look at the five leading reasons to use a CDN with your WordPress site.
1. Speeds Up Your Site
If your pages take too long to load, you will be losing potentially valuable traffic It can also have a harmful effect on your search engine ranking. One of the best reasons to use a CDN is for faster page loading. This is important to keep visitors on your site. It’s also a factor in SEO, as Google looks at how quickly your pages load when assessing your site’s overall quality.
2.Reach a Global Audience at a Reasonable Cost
If you want to reach a global audience, a CDN lets you do this without spending much money. Using a free or low cost CDN plugin, such as Photon or W3 Total Cache, you make it possible for your global visitors to get your content delivered by nearby servers. This saves you from having to develop a costly infrastructure or to use separate servers in different locations
3. Easy to Integrate With WordPress
WordPress is a platform that works very well with content delivery networks. There are quite a few CDN services for WordPress, including free plugins. One of the most popular of these is Photon by Jetpack. You can use a free plugin, such as Photon by Jetpack, which speeds image loading on your site. This is an especially good option for WordPress sites that contain many graphics. This will allow your visitors to view your images quickly with minimum page loading time. Another good plugin is W3 Total Cache, which caches browser, database and page content. This plugin can improve site performance by as much as ten times. It also provides significant bandwidth savings by compressing JavaScript, CSS and HTML. Larger sites can take advantage of a CDN service such as CloudFlare, which offers both a free and paid plans.
4. Helps You Handle Growth
Many business websites face challenges as they start to grow. You may be adding more pages, products, images and other media to your site. At the same time, you are hopefully generating more traffic. All of this can slow down your site and reduce performance which can impede your growth. A CDN is a simple and affordable way to handle many more visitors without the site slowing down.
5. Provides Consistent Performance
Most websites don’t get the same amount of traffic all the time. On certain days or certain hours, traffic tends to spike. This can cause inconsistent performance, where your site slows down or glitches occur during popular times. A CDN helps you avoid this by providing you with consistent and reliable content delivery. For example, if you are running a special promotion and suddenly see a huge spike in traffic for a few hours, a CDN will let you handle it.
Recap
In conclusion, a content delivery network is one of the best ways to handle growth, spikes in traffic and a global audience. The type of CDN you should use depends on your needs. If you have a medium sized online presence, with fewer than 100,000 views per month, a CDN plugin will probably serve your needs. If you are larger than that, you should look into more robust services such as CloudFlare or Coral CDN, which is run by MIT. No matter which solution you choose, a CDN can help make your WordPress site faster and more reliable.