How To Increase Your Website Speed With CDN77 And CloudFlare

Kumar Gauraw

Website speed is one of the top concerns of every webmaster. Especially since the news came that search engines factor page load time for ranking websites, it has become even more critical aspect. And that's exactly where Content Delivery Networks (CDN) come into picture.

Speed Up Your Website With CDN77 And CloudFlare

Speaking of CDN service providers, if you haven’t heard about CDN77 before, you are not alone. I didn’t know about them either, until I was approached by Jessica at CDN77 to try their services on one of my websites. Jessica offered me a free 14 day trial period.  I agreed to try them on my Krishna World Wide Team website.

Although I am on a paid plan with MaxCDN until the end of this year, I wanted to find out a good alternative to MaxCDN in case I need. So, I started my trial and so far I am extremely happy with the website speed improvements I have seen.

CDN77 is relatively a new player in the Content Delivery Network (CDN) marketplace with an impressive presence across the globe and a solid distributed server network across all subcontinents. Their Asia coverage is  especially  awesome!

What impressed me even more was their personalized service. I had a little challenge in activating the service along with CloudFlare because both were not working together properly because of a configuration conflict (which I didn’t know). I sent an email to Jessica and she got the problem investigated right away and I had CDN77 up and running along with CloudFlare in just a few minutes.

If you are here for the first time, you might not have seen my previous posts where I discussed about benefits of CloudFlare and how to configure it. You may also want to see how the combination of CloudFlare and MaxCDN  became the game changer in the process of speeding up my website. So, here are the links to those posts for your reference:

  1. CloudFlare Supercharges Your Website Security And Performance
  2. Blazing Fast And Secure Website Using MaxCDN And CloudFlare

Why You Need A CDN Service For Your Website

In my post earlier this week, I shared why you should invest in your blog or website. Just to extend the investment criteria, think about your SEO needs. Do you know that your website’s page load speed is one of the key parameters that search engines consider before ranking?

That means, the faster your website loads, the higher your chances of getting a higher rank. That is why all top SEO experts are talking about website speed as an important factor to consider when planning your resources for SEO.

The best way to get your website speed to improve is to implement a good Content Delivery Network (CDN) service on your website. When you do that, the static contents of your website pages (such as your CSS, JavaScript, images, audio files, video files etc.) can be delivered from the closest server from the location of the browsing user using the distributed network of servers that your CDN service provides. This makes a tremendous difference on your page load speed of your website.

Interesting Features Of CDN77

CDN77 seems to have almost all features that I currently enjoy with MaxCDN. But there are a few enhanced features of CDN77 that have caught my attention. For example:

  • CDN77 has 24 POP Locations in North America where MaxCDN has about 8
  • CDN77 has 28 POP Locations in Europe where MaxCDN has about 2
  • CDN77 has 8 POP Locations in Asia where MaxCDN has about 2

Best of all, CDN77 works well with CloudFlare as well which I cannot live without. CloudFlare is a basic CDN service already along with their awesome security features and when I tested CDN77 and found it working very well alongside of CloudFlare, I was convinced.

CDN77 Seems To Be Very Cost Effective

I am on the yearly plan with MaxCDN which is about $79 a year upto 1TB of bandwidth. It is a low volume plan and works well for me at this time.

CDN77 doesn’t have such a pricing option at this time. However, they price based on usage which is very competitive when compared with MaxCDN or any other CDN service provider.  When I compare them with MaxCDN, I find them at least 5 cents cheaper per GB of bandwidth usage in every situation.

Steps To Setup CDN77 On Your WordPress Website

Although CDN77 works with many content management systems such as Drupal, Joomla, Magento etc., I am going to share the setup instructions for WordPress only. For setting up CDN77 on other systems, you can go to their online setup guide after you sign-up for their service and find out instructions for  your platform.

The steps involved in setting up CDN77 with a CloudFlare powered self-hosted WordPress website are very simple and here is what you need to do:

1. Create Your Account With CDN77

Sign-up for a 14 days trial period with CDN77 by clicking here. Fill in the details it asks and you will have a ready to use account in minutes. You will receive a confirmation email with your login information and instructions to create CDN, to configure CDN and to implement CDN on your WordPress website.

2. Create A New CDN Record For Your Domain

Login to your account with the login information you received and create a new CDN for your website. The screen will look something like this:

Create New CDN In Your New CDN77 Account

3. Add A New CNAME Record On Your Domain

This step requires you to login to your domain registration account. If you are on CloudFlare, you will login to your CloudFlare account and add a new CNAME entry for your CDN subdomain that you created in the last step. In my case, I made a new CNAME entry for cdn.krishnawwteam.com and pointed it to the CDN URL provided by CDN77 for my account.

Once you finish this step, you will be able to use your CNAME (e.g.  cdn.krishnawwteam.com in my case) or the CDN URL alternatively while configuring your website.

4. Configure CDN Using W3 Total Cache WordPress Plugin

In the end, you need to configure your CDN using W3 Total Cache plugin which is the most popular cache plugin in the WordPress world. By the way, if you have WP Super Cache, you can configure your CDN with that as well.

However, since I use W3 Total Cache, I am going to provide the steps I followed to setup CDN77 on my website. Here are the steps:

  • From the General Settings menu within W3 Total Cache, scroll down until you see the configuration settings for CDN and enable the option as shown in the image below:

Configure CDN77 With W3 Total Cache Plugin - General Settings

Save the changes using the button and go to the next step.

  • Scroll up towards the top where you will see the link to jump to the CDN section of the W3 Total Cache plugin where you will be able to provide your CDN URL. Here is the screenshot showing what you need to click:

CDN Settings In W3 Total Cache Plugin

  • Now you are at the final configuration screen where you will provide your CDN URL as shown in the image below.

CDN Configuration Settings In W3 Total Cache Plugin

  • Save your settings and you have just powered your website with the powerful network of CDN77. You can now go to Pingdom or GTMetrics like webpage load testing tools and notice the difference in your improved website speed.

Did My Team Website Speed Increase?

Absolutely!

I usually test using Pingdom and WebPageTest tools.  If I disable CDN on Krishna World Wide Team website right now, my website loading speed goes down to about 7 to 10 seconds.

However, as soon as I enable CDN77, my website speed improves dramatically. Pingdom shows that my website loads in about 1.45 to 1.70 seconds depending on test location.

WebPageTest services shows that for a full load, the website speed for the first time visitor is about 5 seconds and for subsequent visits, it’s about 1.11 seconds. Considering the way WebPageTest does the evaluation, this is not at all bad.

My Conclusion

I am onboard with MaxCDN at the moment and I am extremely happy with them. Therefore, I am not in a mood to rock the boat as of now. However, if I ever decide to move away from MaxCDN for any reason, CDN77 will be my next option considering their performance, support and network.

Over To You, Share Your Thoughts

What CDN service do you use? What kind of loading time do you experience on your website? Do you have any recommendations?

Please share your thoughts in the comments section or simply click here. Thank you kindly!

Kumar Gauraw

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Kumar Gauraw is a Personal Branding & Social Media strategist helping entrepreneurs and skilled professionals achieve personal and professional success by developing leadership and leveraging the power of the Internet, Blogging and Social Media.

18 Awesome Thoughts So Far, Add Yours Now...

  1. I can easily see the difference between the time your website used to take before you implemented MaxCDN on this website and now.
    Similarly, our Krishna World Wide is loading much much faster now than it used to. Thank you for adding one more treasure to your website educational posts series.

  2. Michael

    This is great information sir. Thank you for step by step instructions on CDN77. This is the most comprehensive information about CDN setup I have so far come to so far. You are gr8…..

  3. Good information. I’m hesitant to move to cdn77, they are new and they are using left over bandwidth and spare hardware. As opposed to MaxCDN which uses dedicated hardware and dedicated bandwidth. I guess you get what you pay for, MaxCDN is quality and Cdn77 cheap. I don’t know if I would want to put my site on a cheap CDN.

    • Andrew,

      Thank you for your sharing your thoughts about that. And if you are happy with MaxCDN (Just like I am at the moment), there isn’t any need to move. However, there are many more people you and I think who are looking for a solution on budget. CDN77 has many more locations worldwide than MaxCDN with a prince which is the cheapest in market. So, it isn’t bad in case somebody is looking to try a CDN service.

      Regards,

      Kumar

    • Hi Andrew and Kumar,

      first Kumar, please let me thank you for this great article on CDN implementation. It will be very helpful for CDN77 customers and any other users willing to speed up their sites with Content delivery network.

      Andrew, about your hesitation I just would like to add information that CDN77 is on the market for over 2 years now. We have done many improvements on our network and service during this period of time.

      Our service is affordable but stabile and powerful, as you can see e.g. in cedexis . com reports.

      About using spare capacity, we have about 40 own edges worldwide, all powered by latest SSD technology and with dedicated (non spare) capacity.

      Please be welcome to test the service on your own in our Free Trial, available for all CDN77 customers http://www.cdn77.com/promo.

      Thank you for your ideas on our service and feel free to get in touch with me for any further information.

      Jana Jurik (CDN77 Business Development Manager)

      • Hello Jana,

        Thank you for clarifying to Andrews questions. Your response clarifies a lot of confusion. Thank you very much, again!

        Regards,

        Kumar

  4. by the way, Isn’t maxcdn 39.95 for 1tb a year not 79?

    • Andrew, yes they are. But that is a deal price which can be taken off anytime. I want to quote their base price.

  5. ime ibanga

    Thanks, Kumar for sharing this vital info. This will be very useful for my next website project!

    • Sure Ime, I am glad it helped. Good luck to you!

  6. Nice post brother,this tutorial is really helpful and also you publish something new for your site reader, keep it up.

    • Thank you Aamir. Appreciate the appreciation.

  7. Wonderful explanation and great resource provides by this awesome article since most of us faces issue like this.Thanks for sharing this great informative piece.

  8. Great information about CDN77 and cloudflare. Great pictorial representation of setting of this service. And also thanks for sharing your personal experience about these services, look like this right choice not only for me any once can avail this.
    Best Regards,

    • Absolutely! Especially since the next Google PageRank algorithm execution is around the corner, it seems like a great idea to conqur speed side of your websites for better results.

  9. There are some ways to increase website speed, CDN is the great way to do that work. Now I use WP super Cache plugin, so could you guide me how to set up CDN in WP Super Cache?

  10. Thanks Kumar for the tips. CDN77 and Cloudflare were new to me Now I understood it. Going to check speed of my website after implementation.

Please Note: My goal is to host interesting conversations with caring, honest, and respectful people. Therefore, I reserve the right to delete comments that are snarky, offensive, or off-topic.