A while back I added a new plugin on my site. It helps with the speed of my blog and the load time of it. Since there is a lot of media on my site with pictures, video, js snippets, etc - I wanted my site to perform well and make sure a lot of the media is not slowing down my site. For example my main page of my blog has a lot of content and is the heaviest load on my blog.
I have been using W3 Total Cache Plugin and it has been great, but more importantly I activated the cloud option within the plugin. Now most of the media is being loaded from Amazon's S3 platform. The images, js snippets, media, etc. It has resulted in my blog to loaded much faster and according to pingdom.com - 84% faster than most website.
How to Activate CDN with W3 Total Cache
It is fairly easy to install and setup the cloud or even the CDN option within W3 Total Cache. First you will have to enter your Amazon S3 credentials. Click on CDN in the top link menus and find the configuration option, enter your credentials. Once that has been verified you are rady to activate the cloud on your blog and you will notice the speed difference.
Now, simply go to the general settings of W3 Total Cache and find the option labeled CDN. Check off enable and choose your service. Since I already have an Amazon S3 service, I chose that from the drop down.
There are other things on you can speed up your blog from compressing JS and CSS code. Remove unwanted and unnecessary plugins and even reducing images on the blog. If you still want to have these perks, a CDN can be very beneficial and you are only paying for what is being used. Last month my Amazon S3 invoice came out to $3.26. Did not break my pocket at all.
Remember you want your users to start to engage in your blog and to start reading the content on it. If your website does not load then a potential reader or even a lead will leave your site. Also speed is being measure by Google as part of their search algorithm. Google wants to make sure they are providing the most relevant but also useful site to their users.
If you have went to a webpage and it never loaded you get ticked off a bit and you leave. You do not want that happening with your readers. Utilizing W3 Total Cache will increase your load time and you will have happier readers. The best art this plugin is free, you ca easily download it from WordPress: Download W3 Total Cache from WordPress
