Getting started with a CDN
The gap between knowing this and actually doing it is where most teams lose ground. A short on-ramp to a CDN for teams who have not touched it before.
Speed is a feature people notice only in its absence, and then they leave rather than complain. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.
What it costs to ignore
Distance to the server is real latency. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- A CDN also absorbs traffic spikes
- Change one thing and measure it
Static sites benefit almost for free. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.
What this looks like day to day
Performance work is mostly subtraction, which makes it unpopular and effective. Three things worth confirming about a CDN before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- A CDN also absorbs traffic spikes — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.