When you’re running a large, active site, speed becomes absolutely critical. You don’t want to crash your server and miss out on potential traffic or customers. Anything that you can do to take the load off your servers is a good idea.
I recently discovered jsDelivr, a free CDN (Content Delivery Network) where Javascript developers can host their files, and users can speed up their websites by offloading all of their JS plugins. You may have heard of cdnjs.com, a similar service that offers hosting for js libraries. jsDelivr, on the other hand, offers hosting for all js and jquery plugins out there. They have 13 locations to guarantee you a fast website.
How can I use jsDelivr with WordPress?
Better site performance for free sounds great. jsDelivr can be used with WordPress with the help of the new jsDelivr WordPress CDN Plugin.
Why use jsDelivr with WordPress?
Not that I have to convince you, since you’re probably already installing it now… ;) But here are a few reasons why you should consider integrating your WordPress site with jsDelivr:
- Speeds up your website
- Cuts the bandwidth bill
- Offloads the server from extra requests
- There are no bandwith limits
jsDelivr makes it very easy to start using a CDN for your js files, even if you wouldn’t call yourself a developer. The plugin autocratically scans your WordPress install to see what it can offload. Here’s what else it does:
- On the fly rewriting of all URLs. No need to change the code.
- Move selected files to footer
- Apply Async/Defer loading to your javascripts.
- Compatible with W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache
- Automatic synchronization with our DB.
- Allows you to select the files you want to load from the CDN
- Supports HTTPS
- Uses Google CDN to load jQuery to take advantage of the user’s browser cache.
How to use jsDelivr
The plugin is fairly easy to use, but a few extra instructions wouldn’t hurt.
Step 1: Install and Activate jsDelivr WordPress CDN Plugin
Step 2: Go to Settings >> jsDelivr CDN and click “Scan Website”
It may appear to be scanning forever, but this is a bug in the current version. Just wait awhile and refresh the page and you’ll see what the scanner found. This should be fixed in the next version.
Step 3: Enable all of the scripts you want to offload
Have a look through the scripts that the plugin finds and then enable those that you want to offload.
Step 4: Save your settings and enable the plugin.
Congrats, you should now be offloading a good number of your scripts! You can check by viewing the the source of your website to see where they are being hosted. You should also notice your site getting a little more zippy. Make sure to go through every page, especially those that make use of scripts, to be certain that the offloading didn’t break any functionality. If you notice any problems, just disable the script in question and use the version hosted on your server. I’ve tested the plugin this afternoon and didn’t have any problems offloading all the scripts that it recommended.
Better site performance for free – do you really even have to think about it? Install the jsDelivr WordPress CDN Plugin for free today and tell your friends about it. If you do a before and after speed test, we’d love to hear your results in the comments.
Sounds awesome and all but how do they make money? How do they offer this what looks to be awesome service for free?
Hey, I am the creator of jsDelivr service.
We do not make money and don’t plan to. Its a non-profit web service and all we want is to help people have faster websites.
All of the traffic is sponsored by CDN companies and for the rest(SSL certs,Hosting,Domains,Freelancers…) I pay myself.
If you have any other questions I will be happy to answer them :)
Cheers
Is it possible to use network-wide on a multisite install?
This feature will be probably available in the next version.
They are sponsored by MaxCDN :)
What if your host already uses a CDN? Zippykid in my case
I tried installing this on three different sites each using a different theme but it doesn’t seem to be working. On two of the sites, after scanning the plug-ins, I am unable to get the selection of scripts to show that they are enabled. On the third site, they initially showed that they were enabled but I rescanned the site because I interrupted it quickly and was wondering if it would find more scripts if I let it run a little longer. After doing that, the scripts no longer show enabled. It looks like this plug-in has a few more bugs.
Nice timing! I have been looking for a little boost and CDN services for a multisite. This plugin seemed to work on 3 sub directory installs guite well. Got little boost 3 points boost in Google Page speed test after installation.
Oh and forgot to say it didn’t work from the start and maybe messed with WP Super Cache since timestamps didn’t match, but after updating the Cache at main page timestamps matched and plugin started to work like it should.
Don’t know if sumone else got that kinda situation but you can figure it out by just testing the cache. If ya discover errors update status on main site and it works.. Well atleast here heh.. Thnx again! :)
Almost every plugin has some bugs. So, I was not disappointed with bugs on it. Looks very promising! Thanks for sharing this wonderful plugin.
It’s an awesome plugin! I use my own setup with Amazon CloudFront for some of my JS, but not all of that was working quite how I wanted it to. This is really helping – in a test on http://webpagetest.org using Chrome in Dublin, Ireland (they’re the closest site to me that have Chrome, which is the most common browser to visit my site), the first view load time was 41.778 seconds (repeat time 5.296s)! jsDelivr brought it right down to 6.624 seconds (repeat time 5.354s). Still not as quick as I’d like it to be (still working on that!), but very promising results!
Hi Chris, currently jsDelivr uses the old infrastructure which includes 13 locations. This would be fine for the most people but not for me.
The new system combines 2 CDN providers with more than 70 locations all over the world. Here is a preview http://www.jsdelivr.com/map2.html
The difference in speed and latency should be huge from the tests I did.
It will launch as soon as I will be able to afford the new (expensive) SSL certificate it requires to work via HTTPS.
You can actually test the new system right now by replacing the URLs with cdn.jsdelivr.eu
Thanks
it says that the plugin is is disabled and need to update CDN data but doesn’t do anything when I click it. The scan website therefore is greyed out. What to do?
Wait for the new version. It should fix your problem. If not then use our website to open a support ticket.
Thanks
Do you know when the new version will be released?
We are having the same issue. We are excited for the update when it comes out so we can use it! : )
i cant get past step 2. Clicking scan website does no action and refreshing after a while does nothing.
I have the same action. it says “Please Wait” after I hit scan. I will follow the thread and look forward to using it.
This plugin cause conflict with pro sites plugin. When you have the free jsdeliver CDN plugin activated. When users go to the upgrade payment page can´t choose pricing option.
Nice Plugin
Sounds great! I used Cloudflare CDN but it lowers my Adsense CTR and CPC and also showing a lot of buggy things like problem loading JS etc. Is this plugin quite safe ??
Can’t do anything it says error updating