This Blog Is Now Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

This blog and most of my sites are now running under a content delivery network aka CDN. Basically, a CDN is a computer network all over the world used to deliver content, as the name implies 🙂 . It speeds up the delivery of content because content is being delivered to visitors from the nearest server available to them.

For example, if somebody from Amsterdam visits this blog, instead of downloading all the static files (css, jpg, ico, js, etc..) directly from my host (Dreamhost), the files will be delivered from a server in Amsterdam, making it load faster. If someone from LA visits this blog, it will receive the files from an LA server.

Aside from speed advantage, it lightens the load on my server. It will only serve the static files to the CDN and the CDN will be the one delivering them to the visitors. Bandwidth and memory usage decrease which in turn pull down my monthly hosting payment.

I just paid $39.95 for the CDN for 1 TB bandwidth for 1 year, speed up my sites and made a monthly savings on my hosting payment of around $50. This means that I paid $39.95 to save $600 in one year. Not bad, isn’t it? Though $39.95 is just a promo price, the regular price is only $99, which I’ll pay on my second year. Still, an advantage for me.

I use MaxCDN for my CDN needs. The CDN used by John Chow, Mashable and CopyBlogger. I’ll be posting a tutorial on how to implement MaxCDN to a self-hosted WordPress blog using WP Super Cache in the near future. Most of the tutorial I see online uses W3 Total Cache. Since I’m a WP Super Cache user and I don’t like changing plugins just to use another service, I studied and found a way to implement CDN using WP Super Cache. I’ll blog about it later, maybe tomorrow.