WordPress is a popular CMS that’s being used by most successful businesses across the globe. The platform powers 65.1% of the CMS-built sites. So, if your website uses WordPress, the competition is high.
In today’s digital age, visitors demand speed. Hence, you need a website that loads quickly. This will improve your website’s UX and prevent visitors from moving to a competitor’s website.
That’s where a CDN or content delivery network helps!
CDN is a system of interconnected servers (distributed across the world) that improves website performance by increasing the bandwidth and reducing latency issues. It facilitates data caching, thereby allowing websites to serve content with high performance and speed.
So, using a CDN can enable your users across the globe to access content on your WordPress website without any delays or extended buffering. These network of servers are designed to host and deliver copied of your WordPress static content, namely images, CSS, JavaScript, and video streams.
Luckily, WordPress offers several plugins and tools to boost site performance. For instance, the CMS directory offers several plugins that can speed up WordPress websites. It also offers CDN plugins that come with optimization features that allow easy integration and caching functions.
All this helps scaling businesses handle growing traffic with ease.
But does your website need a WordPress CDN?
In this post, I will share the top reasons why it does!
1. It Boosts Website Performance
Websites that load quickly are known to perform better across a range of marketing metrics and rank well on Google. So, whether you are aiming at organic search results, site engagement, or conversions, speed matters!
CDN can improve the speed of your WordPress website in the following ways –
1.1. Reduces the Time to First Byte (TTFB)
WordPress CDN can decrease latency by reducing the physical distance needed for the data to travel. Besides, CDN can lower your TTFB, which is the measure of the time the browser has to wait before receiving the first byte of data from the server.
The longer the TTFB, the more time it takes for the page to open.
CDN not just lowers the TTFB of the static files but also indirectly reduces the TTFB of the page file by reducing the load on the server. This helps in processing the requests faster.
1.2. Ensures Faster Delivery with Caching
CDNs can deliver files quickly because they utilize caching. Once a media file is copied it has to be requested once or twice by a visitor before it can get cached on the CDN.
The CDN places an HTTP header on these requests, referred to as X-Cache. When the first or second request is placed, it will show up as MISS (not yet cached). However, on subsequent requests, it will show up as HIT (cached on the CDN).
1.3. Utilizes GZIP Compression
WordPress CDNs often use GZIP, a file format used for file compression and decompression. GZIP compression allows size reduction of the HTML, stylesheets, and JavaScript files on the website. All major CDNs have this compression enabled by default.
1.4. HTTP/2
HTTP/2 is one of the most striking features of CDNs for speeding the delivery of assets. The protocol can better support multiplexing, parallelism, and server push, thereby improving the website’s performance.
This boost in website performance offers immense credibility to your website, thus improving your ranking in the SERPs.
What’s more?
CDNs use canonical headers and caching algorithms and scan for duplicate content issues. All this has a positive impact on your site’s online performance and ranking.
2. It Makes Content Delivery Reliable
To begin with, let’s understand what makes a CDN. CDNs comprise three major components, namely the edge servers, the pull URLs, and website files.
2.1. Edge Servers
This is the prime server where your website is loaded. These are typically located in one or two areas. The user requests for data, it’s directed towards the nearest edge server for faster loading.
2.2. Pull URLs
This is a directory from which the connected servers copy data for the users.
2.3. Website Files
This is the main content on the website. It may comprise videos, images, and audio files.
When the edge server needs to deliver content, it makes sure that it recovers the latest data. If the content is outdated, the server requests the original server for the latest content.
CDN helps to preserve the data integrity when changes are made to the assets. These changes are mirrored across multiple servers on the network, thus preserving the consistency and integrity of data.
Hence, using CDN ensures that each version of your website is identical across various locations.
3. It Boosts Website Security
WordPress is the most popular CMS; so, security vulnerabilities are inevitable. Not all webmasters are careful enough to run secure setups and versions. Hence, webmasters often face WordPress security challenges.
Modern CDN providers offer websites added security by allowing site owners to implement web application firewalls or WAF. Deploying CDNs can significantly reduce the risk of DDoS ( Direct Denial of Service) attacks and data sniffing on your WordPress site.
Further, a CDN puts your website behind a proxy, thus allowing you to hide your origin IP address. Though this isn’t a sure-shot way to secure a website, it surely adds to the security.
4. It Gives Your Business Global Coverage
Competition is cut-throat for businesses wanting to go global. CDNs give such businesses an edge over the local competitors as it helps make their websites easily accessible in all the customer-based locations.
Even with a normal bandwidth, CDN gives businesses global coverage without a lot of investment or effort. This greatly reduces the inconsistency in content and easy access to the Java and CSS elements on the website.
5. It Preserves Website Data
CDNs are known to preserve data in case the main server goes down for any reason. They are designed to take control of such situations by data caching in their servers. This allows easy access to data even when the main server is unresponsive.
Situations Where Your Website May Not Require a CDN
Having given you enough reasons to invest in WordPress CDN, there are several instances you may not need it. At times, your website may function well even in the absence of a WordPress CDN.
For instance, if your business is targeting a specific location or country, geolocated web hosting may be a better option than a CDN. Let’s understand the cases in which you may not be a CDN.
- Your website traffic isn’t growing exponentially (neither do you expect it to).
- Your website doesn’t offer large media files, images, or CSS. In such cases, you can also invest in a good WordPress caching plugin.
- Your business targets visitors from a specific location.
- Avoid investing in WordPress CDN purely for security purposes. For instance, if you need to filter out bad traffic from good, counting on a security plugin like Sucuri is a better option than CDN.
- When your hosting provider offers in-house CDN. In case you are using a reputed WordPress hosting, in all probability, it offers a CDN solution along with server-side caching of content.
Summing Up
CDN is an inexpensive and effective solution for improving your website performance and data integrity. It allows users across the globe to enjoy the experiences offered without any delays of extended buffering.
If you want to make sure that your website content gets unparalleled eyeballs, you should invest in a CDN solution. I am sure you are convinced of its benefits by now.
I’d like to hear about your experience now! Do you use or consider investing in a CDN? What are the top benefits you think CDNs bring? Let me know!
Author Bio:
Lucy is a creative content writer and strategist at Marketing Digest. She specializes in writing about digital marketing, technology, entrepreneurship, and education. When she is not writing or editing, she spends time reading books, cooking and traveling.
