A CDN (content delivery network) is a set of machines spread around the world that keep copies of your site and hand them out from whichever machine is closest to the visitor. The site still lives on your hosting: the CDN sits in front of it.
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We do not sell a CDN. There is no CDN product in our shop, no plan includes one, and there is no button anywhere in the panel that switches one on. This article is about the CDN you can use: Cloudflare, an outside company with a free plan. The account is yours, opened directly with them, and it goes neither through us nor onto your invoice.
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The problem it solves is distance
Every file a visitor downloads is a round trip to the server. An ordinary page is dozens of round trips: the page, the stylesheets, the scripts, the images, the fonts. The further away the server, the longer each one takes, and the delays add up.
Where our servers are, and what that means for the people visiting you, is in where our servers are. That distance is what a CDN shortens: the visitor stops talking to the server and talks to a machine near them that already holds the copy.
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A CDN does not make the server faster. It makes the journey shorter. If PHP and the database take four seconds to build the page, it still takes four seconds on the first visit. A CDN cuts delivery time, not build time.
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When it genuinely helps
| 1 |
Your visitors are far from the server. The clearest case, and the only one where the difference shows without instruments.
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| 2 |
The site is heavy on static files. Lots of photographs, catalogues, custom fonts, short videos. These are exactly what a CDN caches best.
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| 3 |
You get spikes. A campaign, a news item, a launch. The CDN absorbs most of the spike without the server noticing.
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| 4 |
You are under attack. Automated traffic that never reaches the server spends none of your account resources. For what we already do at our end, see what we do about security.
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| 5 |
You want the server address out of sight. With a CDN in front, a lookup on the domain returns its addresses and not your hosting one.
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When it changes nothing at all
| Symptom |
Does a CDN fix it? |
| The WordPress dashboard drags |
No. The dashboard is never cached, anywhere. The usual culprit is a plugin. |
| The page is slow even on the very first load |
No. That is build time. See what actually makes a difference. |
| A photograph of several megabytes on a page |
Barely. The CDN delivers the file from closer, but the file is still enormous. Shrink the image first. |
| The account hits its resource ceiling every day |
Partly. It relieves whatever is static and nothing else. See the limits nobody advertises. |
| Nearly all your visitors are close to the server |
Barely. The journey was already short. You gain the filtering, not the speed. |
| E-mail is slow or missing |
No. Mail does not go through a CDN, and it should not. See why your e-mail is not sending or receiving. |
What a CDN does not replace
This trips people up often enough to be worth settling before you start.
| Not a replacement for |
Why |
| Hosting |
A CDN does not hold your site: it holds temporary copies. Switch the server off and the CDN has nothing left to serve. |
| Backups |
A cached copy is not a backup. See making and keeping your own backup. |
| The certificate on the server |
You need one at each end. Ours is issued automatically and stays that way. See what an SSL certificate is. |
| Keeping the site updated |
An out of date WordPress behind a CDN is an out of date WordPress. See protecting the WordPress login. |
| Tidying up what is badly built |
If the page loads forty files it never uses, it now loads forty faster. |
Measure before you decide
| 1 |
Open the site from another network. Mobile data, for instance. If it is quick there, the site is not the problem.
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| 2 |
Notice whether it is the first visit or every visit. Only the first being slow means the page is being built. All of them means delivery, and that is where a CDN comes in.
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| 4 |
Write the numbers down. Without the before, the after means nothing.
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If the answer is still yes after all that, the concrete road is in putting a CDN in front of your site, step by step and in Cloudflare: when it helps and how to switch it on. And if the conclusion is that the plan is the problem rather than delivery, see what to measure before you change plan.
Before deciding, it is worth knowing exactly what you gain: what a CDN does for you. The questions we get most often are in frequently asked questions about CDNs, and what changes and what does not is in Cloudflare: what changes and what stays the same.
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Not sure a CDN would fix your case? Send us the address and tell us where your visitors come from.
Open a support ticket
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