If you’re looking to host your own website or app, you’ve probably considered using a content management system (CMS) like Joomla! or WordPress. While there are many benefits to self-hosting, there are also some significant drawbacks. One of the biggest concerns for webmasters is performance. Self-hosting often loads dozens, or even hundreds of other web requests per page load, which significantly hurts performance.
An ideal solution to this problem is to serve content exclusively from cached and often-generated static assets, such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Generating these resources on-demand and serving them from a CDN (Content Delivery Network) is called “hosting on demand.” When a visitor requests a page that includes one of these resources, the browser first checks the CDN for the resource; if it’s not there, the request is forwarded to the web server, which loads the requested page and generates the content. Once the content is loaded into memory, it’s served directly to the user’s device.
While it’s easy enough to get started with a CDN, generating and hosting content on demand requires a bit more work. In this article, we’ll introduce you to a CDN host that allows you to easily spin up your own content-driven website.
What is a content delivery network?
A content delivery network (CDN) is a collection of web servers that distribute content on behalf of third parties, typically large websites. When a user requests content from a CDN, the CDN delivers the content in a way that’s typically much faster than what the user would experience if the content was served from the original website’s web server. This is possible because content delivery networks optimize web traffic and ensure that your content is delivered to your users as quickly as possible.
Why should you use a CDN for your website? Performance is one of the biggest concerns for webmasters, and it’s the number one reason why people choose to host their websites with a CDN. If your users can’t load your content fast enough, they will go to another website. Google measures website speed in seven different ways, including page load time, and having a fast and reliable website is a top priority.
How do I get started with a CDN?
To get started with a CDN, you will first need to install a DNS (Domain Name System) server locally so that you can create alias entries for your custom domain. A DNS server is a process that translates a real name into an IP (Internet Protocol) address, so that your web requests can be routed to the right place.
After you’ve installed a DNS server, you can create an alias record for your website’s domain name so that when a user enters the name of your website into their browser, the DNS server will resolve the name to an IP address. When someone enters a domain name into their browser, the server will determine whether or not that domain name is registered, and if it is, it will forward the request to the appropriate IP address.
Now that you have an IP address, you can set up the server to be accessed via HTTPS (Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol). Setting up HTTPS for a website is as easy as installing a certificate on the server. Since the IP address of your server is encrypted in the connection, users will not be able to see it, which prevents IP address-based hacks. Installing a HTTPS certificate for your website is free through LetsEncrypt.org, the Certificate Authority, which also offers free certificates for temporarily-unavailable domain names.
How does a CDN work?
To understand how a CDN works, you have to understand how DNS and HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) work together. When a user visits your website, their device will have a DNS query loaded into its cache. The device will then make a subsequent HTTP request for resources, such as images, videos, and web pages. If the device already has a cached version of these resources, they will be loaded into memory and served to the user efficiently and quickly. If the device does not have a cached version of these resources, it will have to go to your server and download them, which is where the latency comes in.
The faster the resources are delivered to your users, the faster they can access the content they seek and the more quickly they can load your website. A CDN takes all the complexity out of delivering content, so that you can focus on creating amazing content, rather than dealing with complex technological issues.
What is a content delivery network’s price?
The price of a CDN depends on how many requests you need it to handle, how quickly you need them to be delivered, and your plan for monetization. Most CDNs charge by the month, with some offering a free trial, so you should be able to find a price that suits your needs. A basic plan from Fast.com, a CDN founded by the people behind Squarespace and Wix.com, costs $5 a month, and offers 1 million requests per month with a 10 Gigabit/second connection and an average response time of five milliseconds. This plan is ideal for small websites or blogs with moderate to high traffic, and those who want to monetize their content.
How can I use a CDN for my site?
Once you’ve set up your DNS and HTTPS servers, all you have to do is use the alias you created for your site in your browser. In most cases, your browser will automatically fill in any web address with your custom domain so that you can access the content without having to type the full address. If you haven’t installed a DNS server yet, you can use Google’s public DNS servers, which are very highly recommended and offer incredible performance. After you’ve entered your website’s URL into your browser’s address bar, you will see it loaded into your browser’s cache, as shown in the image below.
As you can see, the CDN caches all the content for my website, including the homepage and about pages. This means that if I enter the URL for my homepage now, Google will see it and will understand that I want to see content about hosting with tomcat. Without any intervention from my part, the CDN will fetch my homepage from its server and load it into my browser, giving me the ability to quickly access my content from any device.
While this may be convenient, it’s not without its drawbacks. Since the CDN is serving my content, it will be less “personalized” than my site. Also, since the CDN is caching my content, if I ever delete or update something on my website, it will take time for the CDN to catch up. In some situations it could take a few days or even weeks for all the content in the CDN to reflect the change on my website.
While there are many benefits to using a content delivery network, it’s not for everyone. If you’re looking to host your own website or app, or if you want to use a CDN to increase your site’s performance, you should consider the tradeoffs. Using a CDN can certainly be beneficial, depending on your specific situation. If you’re looking to host your own website or app and you want to improve its speed and functionality, you should consider using a content delivery network.