Skip to content

When a CDN helps and how to add one

Best practices1 min readFixes check cdn-detected

A CDN serves files from a location near the visitor and absorbs traffic spikes. Cloudflare's free plan is enough for most sites.

Step by step, with screenshots: Cache-Control for humans: what to cache, how long, how to bust it →

Check your own site

Runs this check and the other 186, free, in about 45 seconds.

What a passing site looks like

  • A CDN is in front of the siteinfo onlyeffort M

No CDN in front of the site

Why it matters. A CDN serves your files from a location near each visitor and absorbs traffic spikes. Without one, visitors far from your server wait longer for every file.

How to fix it.
  1. Put the site behind a CDN such as Cloudflare, Bunny or Fastly; the free tiers cover most small sites.
  2. At minimum, serve images and static files from a CDN hostname.

Filed under Best practices. Copy is generated from the same catalogue that scores every report, so what you read here is what the report says.