What is a CDN?

A Content Distribution Network (CDN) is an easy way for busy websites to make their site both faster to load and cheaper to run. And with MaxCDN and the free WordPress plugin W3 Total Cache it also VERY EASY to implement. I’ve been using MaxCDN since April, 2010 … and it was probably just a few months after that I discovered the W3 Total Cache plugin for my WordPress sites.

How a CDN Works

A CDN makes your website faster by taking static files (such as images, CSS, and Javascript) and distributing copies of these frequently used (and often very large) files on their worldwide network. So when someone in Spain visits your site, your large files are being delivered from a server close to him. And when a visitor in Texas arrives at your site, his files are coming from a different server, one that is closer to him. And all this happens “automagically” without much setup on your end at all. This is how a CDN makes your site faster, by delivering cached content from servers all over the world, minimizing the distance your bits need to travel to reach the user. It makes also makes it cheaper when you use a CDN such as MaxCDN that has bandwidth changes significantly lower than most website hosts.

Typically you need to be of a “certain size” to even consider using a CDN, but MaxCDN has packages that start at just $39.95 year, and if you use coupon code “MaxCDNcoupon” you can get 25% off!

*All opinions are my own, and I’ve been paying for MaxCDN services for more than three years, but I was given some free bandwidth as an incentive to write this little blog post. Oh, you should also know that I may make a few bucks if you sign up with MaxCDN using the affiliate links I sprinkled throughout this post.