Simple Tips to Setup a CDN for Boosting Site Speed

Speed of the website is measured in terms of the promptness of page loading and every single website in the Internet jungle is aiming to attain higher speed. The website owners or system administrators adopt a wide spectrum of tools and solutions including a Content Delivery Network to retain visitor base.

Significance of site speed

If you want to know importance of page loading speed, then you only have to recall your own experience of browsing a slow website. You must have abandoned the website within few moments in such a situation. Any internet user is not going to tolerate slow loading sites due to availability of a wide spectrum of options to look for. Visitors simply leave such crawling sites for much faster alternatives.

Website speed is also an important factor from the indexation point of view since major search engines are assessing several qualities of site performance including the speed of page loading. Then there is a vital issue of visitor retention, which is a major influencing factor for business websites.

Evolution of Content Delivery Networks

Content Delivery Networks were developed to manage Internet traffic that was growing by leaps and bounds during the initial phases of net connectivity. However it was only during the late nineties that a commercial avatar of CDN came into existence. The aim of CDN is to build a distributed network of edge servers to mitigate the distance between content and user for enhanced browsing experience.

Commercial or non-commercial service providers of CDN solutions build edge servers across a wide geographical area to enable any user to get excellent user experience irrespective of his or her geographical location. Every CDN server in a given network is designed to sync with other servers while holding a large gamut of content to be instantly delivered upon user’s request.

CDN and its impact on site speed

Thanks to the amazing power of internet as it can be leveraged to boost a website’s performance. Content Delivery Network plays a very supportive role in enhancement of user experience in terms of faster page loading. It is also referred to as CDN by technology experts.

Major highlight of Content Delivery Network is improvement of content availability with respect to the distance between user and content. By reducing this distance, a CDN solution facilitates page loading. CDN resource is capable of distributing all types of digital content such as on-demand music or video files, JavaScript, images and even CSS style-sheets to name a few.

It is found that CDN powered websites are more reliable and popular among users because of promptness of page loading and improved user experience. By availing a CDN platform for your website, you can drive more repeat visitors as well as potential customers to your site with help of other SEO techniques.

Brief look at process of CDN setup

In order to gain CDN advantage for enhanced site performance through seamless availability of web content across the large geographical area, one must get associated with a right CDN provider.

Your cloud CDN provider must have a robust presence in the target region which has been identified by you. It doesn’t matter if a CDN provider is based on the other side of planet if the service provider has remarkable presence of CDN servers in your preferred zone.

Secondly, the CDN provider must offer a user friendly method of CDN setting to accelerate and simplify the initial setup process. In following lines, we will discuss about a simple guide to setup CDN resource for boosting speed of the website.

By completing formalities of opening an account with a reputable CDN provider, you are entitled to login by entering your credentials. The next step is to add the website that needs to have accelerated page loading in the dialogue window provided by system.

There is an important activity of adding, changing, and verifying DNS records before continuing with the next step. The system will guide you through the process of DNS setting. In the following step, you will be selecting records that need to be routed via CDN system of the provider.

A simple dialogue window will help you add records such as CNAME, AAAA, or A before you are directed to modify DNS records in a domain control panel for configuring with service provider’s DNS records. In the subsequent steps, you will be activating your domain name by changing domain records. This is vital for availing all speed and security benefits offered by the CDN service provider of repute.

The effect of faster page loading can be verified after 24 hours and you will also be able to confirm improvement in the overall number of page views as well.

Takeaway

Content Delivery Networks have considerably enhanced the entire Internet by improving versatility and usability. Content Delivery Networks are aptly referred to as Internet’s building blocks.

For more info : Can CDN’s accelerate dynamic content/applications?

About Akash Sharma (9 Posts)