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Activate Content Delivery Network on WPEngine

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By Daniel Florido
4 min read

What is a CDN?

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a network of servers strategically distributed around the world to deliver web content, such as text, images, videos, and other resources, to users based on their geographical location. The primary purpose of a CDN is to improve the performance, speed, and reliability of web content delivery.

Here’s how a CDN generally works:

  1. Server Distribution: CDNs consist of multiple servers located in various geographic locations. These servers are often referred to as “edge servers” or “nodes.”
  2. Content Replication: When you use a CDN, your web content is replicated and stored on each of these edge servers. This process is known as caching.
  3. Geographical Proximity: When a user requests a particular piece of content, the CDN uses algorithms to determine the user’s geographical location. The CDN then serves the content from the edge server that is closest to the user.
  4. Faster Delivery: By serving content from a server that is physically closer to the user, CDNs reduce latency and loading times, resulting in a faster and more efficient delivery of web content.
  5. Load Balancing: CDNs can distribute the incoming traffic across multiple servers, ensuring that no single server bears too much load. This helps in maintaining optimal performance even during periods of high traffic.
  6. Content Optimization: CDNs often include features for optimizing content, such as image compression, minification of code, and other techniques to reduce file sizes and improve overall performance.

CDNs are widely used by websites and web applications to enhance the user experience by accelerating the delivery of content and improving website responsiveness. They are especially beneficial for global websites with users spread across different regions, as they help overcome the challenges of internet latency and network congestion. Popular CDN providers include Akamai, Cloudflare, Amazon CloudFront, and others.

What are the benefits of a CDN?

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) offer several benefits for websites and online applications. Here are some key advantages:

  1. Improved Website Performance: CDNs reduce latency by serving content from servers that are geographically closer to users. This results in faster loading times, improved page rendering, and a better overall user experience.
  2. Global Reach: CDNs have servers distributed around the world, enabling websites to deliver content to users regardless of their geographical location. This is particularly beneficial for global audiences, as it helps overcome issues related to internet latency and slow connections.
  3. Bandwidth Savings: CDNs can help reduce the load on your origin server by caching and serving static content (images, stylesheets, scripts). This leads to decreased bandwidth usage, which is especially important for websites with high traffic volumes.
  4. Scalability: CDNs can handle increased traffic and distribute it across multiple servers, ensuring that your website remains responsive during traffic spikes or sudden increases in demand. This scalability is essential for handling surges in user activity without compromising performance.
  5. Reliability and Redundancy: CDNs enhance the reliability of your website by providing redundancy. If one server fails, requests are automatically redirected to another available server. This improves the overall uptime and availability of your web content.
  6. Security: CDNs often come with built-in security features, such as DDoS protection and web application firewalls, which help safeguard your website against malicious attacks and unauthorized access.
  7. Load Balancing: CDNs distribute incoming traffic across multiple servers, preventing any single server from being overloaded. This load balancing ensures optimal performance and responsiveness, even during peak times.
  8. Content Optimization: CDNs can optimize content by compressing images, minifying code, and employing other techniques to reduce file sizes. This not only improves website performance but also reduces the amount of data transferred, contributing to faster load times.
  9. Cost Efficiency: By offloading static content and optimizing data transfer, CDNs can help reduce the bandwidth costs associated with hosting providers. This can be particularly advantageous for websites with a large user base or heavy multimedia content.
  10. Analytics and Reporting: Many CDNs provide analytics and reporting tools that offer insights into website performance, user behavior, and traffic patterns. This information can be valuable for optimizing content delivery strategies.

In summary, CDNs offer a range of benefits that contribute to faster, more reliable, and efficient content delivery, ultimately enhancing the overall user experience for website visitors.

Activate the Content Delivery Network within WPEngine

  1. Log in to the User Portal
  2. Select an environment from the Sites page
  3. Click Domains in the secondary menu, on the left
  4. Scroll down on this page and locate your domain
  5. Click the button labelled Upgrade Network near the domain

UPDATE CName record for the domains

To update a cname record update both the name (domain) and value (cname record) for the domain example.com and /or www.example.com

  1. name value: example.com, cname value: wp.wpenginepowered.com
  2. name value: www.example.com, cname value: wp.wpenginepowered.com

Update the A records

With the ip addresses provided in the WPEngine user portal (along with the cname)

Use Case

  1. When your account starts getting warnings about bandwidth. Activate the CDN to offload the bandwidth.
  2. Ddos protection
  3. increase load speed

more info

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