Q. What inspired you to create this plugin?
van Westen: I was approached by NetDNA/MaxCDN to create a Joomla plugin to be able to integrate their (and others) CDN service easily into Joomla.
Q: What does the CDN for Joomla! extension accomplish? and how does it do it?
van Westen: It changes the urls of media files in your Joomla sites html output to the CDN equivalents.
Q: What are the most common problems you see when people are setting up CDNs?
van Westen: These are mostly down to server/domain setups and incorrectly setting up the CDN service. So both not directly concerning CDN for Joomla! itself.
Q: CDN for Joomla! only works with pull CDNs, why is this? We have found Pull CDNs easier to work with and maintain than Push CDNs, have you had a similar experience?
van Westen: CDN for Joomla! is a pretty simple and straightforward extension. It only takes care of the urls. To be able to handle Push CDNs, it would need code to push files to the server. And frankly, I am not bothered to write that. It was also not necessary for the initial project, as MaxCDN works with a Pull system.
A Pull Zone CDN is much easier for the user, as the CDN provider takes care of getting the media files onto the CDN server when needed. And also takes care of the caching.
Q: One of the Pro Features is the ability to add multiple CDN sets. What is the best way to take advantage of this? All images on one CDN network and all CSS / JS on another CDN Network? Or load up all images and files on several different CDN providers?
van Westen: That is pretty much down to how the user wants to use it. You can indeed use different CDN providers for different media files. Some CDN providers are specialised in serving large files like video, for instance.
Also there seem to be some speed advantages to having different (sub)domains for images and js/css. But that is very much down to the CDN provider and browser.
But you might just want to use it because it is pretty: having images served from images.yourdomain.com and videos from videos.yourdomain.com, etc.
Usually this is only interesting for larger/corporate sites.
Q: What are your thoughts on Content Delivery Networks? Do you think they are a good addition to most sites or are they more work than reward? Do you add CDNs to your joomla sites?
van Westen: This depends on what kind of site and server you have.
If you have a locally aimed site and your server is somewhere near to your target audience, a CDN provider will probably not do you much good.
But if you have a global audience, or your server is far away from your target audience, a CDN can greatly improve the speed of your site.
Also if your server doesn't have the highest specs (cheaper hosts, for instance), a CDN can make a big difference. It not only serves your media files quicker, but also relieves your web server from having to deal with the media files. This way your server is freed up to concentrate on rendering and serving just the html.So that part is faster too.
Q: How much work was involved in creating CDN for Joomla!? Does it require much maintenance?
van Westen: The plugin itself isn't very large. So initial coding was pretty quick. But I put in a lot of time for support and improvements (like with all my extensions). So it keeps evolving and getting better (more possibilities).
Q: CDN for Joomla! is a well designed and complete plugin, are there any features you would like to add?
van Westen: I am currently looking into adding the ability to define dynamic cdn urls, for sites that use multiple domains for one website.
Example, if a website has multiple languages, like domain.co.uk, domain.fr and domain.nl. Then you can set the cdn url to something like {extension}.cdndomain.com. Which will refer to co.uk.cdndomain.com, fr.cdndomain.com and nl.cdndomain.com depending on what language site you are on.
Q: Anything else you would like to add?
van Westen: Use the coupon code JOOMLAHOSTINGREVIEWS to get 30% discount on the Pro version of CDN for Joomla!
We would like to thank Peter for answering our questions about his CDN for Joomla! extension.
Use Coupon: JOOMLAHOSTINGREVIEWS and save 30%
Further Reading
Visit the CDN for Joomla! Page Checkout our Joomla CDN Extension Roundup
