Why you need a CDN

Using a CDN is one of the easiest and fastest ways to boost your website performance.

In order to see where the biggest peformance bootlenecks are, you can start by having a look at a waterfall graph of your website. The example above comes from b2evolution.net (before optimization). Any modern web browser will let you display this for you own site by using its developer menu/tools. When you do this for your site, just remember to clear your browser cache before measuring, otherwise your results won’t really show what your visitors experience.

The waterfall graph shows one line for each file that is downloaded to display your page. Here are the color codes used by Safari:

• The blue line is the main PHP/HTML file;
• The green lines are for CSS files;
• The yellow lines are for Javascript files;
• Finally the purple ones are for images.

Pay attention to 3 important aspects here:

• There are usually more files than you think that need to be downloaded to display a single web page.
• All files don’t start downloading right away.
• Each file has a long Latency time and a comparatively short Actual Transfer time.

Let’s look at these 3 problems in order.

It's easy to get lured into the sweet deals of "Free Domain Name" when purchasing web hosting. Many web-hosting companies advertise such a free domain name.

The same is true for transfers. You'll get something for "free" if you transfer your domain name to your hosting company.

Well...

First, the domain name is never really free. You may get the first year for free, but after that, you'll pay full price for renewal every year. And that price may be well higher than what you would pay at a domain registrar. See what various webhosts really charge you for your domain here.

But that's not even the worst part...

The worst is this: if your domain name is controlled by your webhost, they can make it very hard for you to leave!

Unfortunately, this has happened more than once: customers of some fine web hosting company suddenly realize said hosting company has been acquired by another. Soon they cut costs, staff leaves (or is fired) and service degrades rapidly. Comes time of renewal, customers try to leave for another hosting company only to find that the company makes the procedure so convoluted they pass the due date for renewal. Renewal price is unexpectedly high... but hosting company holds the domain hostage and locks down your site. Customer has no…