What are the options for Content Distribution Networks for use with WordPress? I’d like to their objective pros and cons, their associated plugins or other ways to utilize them, their relative pricing, their appropriate customer profiles/scenarios/use-cases, projects they’ve been used on if you know of any, and any other relevant information.
This is a community wiki and so please provide only one CDN option per answer and please don’t duplicate answers. If you have something to include regarding a CDN already listed please either edit the answer or add comments. And please vote up the solutions you recommend and/or think are most viable.
UPDATE: I found few resources on the web for WordPress+CDN so decided to list them here too:
- HowTo: Configure WordPress To Use A Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Using a CDN for your WordPress blog
- WordPress CDN Enabler plugin
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront is an CDN ‘wrapper’ around Amazon’s S3 service. Distributions can be created from existing S3 buckets, and when a file is requested from it’s CloudFront URL it is either served from the nearest edge locations’s cache or fetched from S3 and cached.
Plugins
- My CDN – handles URL rewriting of JS, CSS, and other theme resources. This plugin only handles the URL rewriting and not actually transferring files into Amazon S3.
- W3 Total Cache – A more comprehensive plugin, handles Cloudfront integration as well as other techniques to improve page load times, such as caching and minification.
Pros
- Low barrier to entry – you don’t buy bandwidth upfront, instead paying for what you use.
- Quick to setup
- A variety of tools and programs are available for managing the files you have on S3/CloudFront
- Supports media streaming
Cons
- Relatively expensive compared to some other services where bandwidth is purchased in advance
Use Cases
Amazon lists a few use cases on their CloudFront product page, including hosting frequently accessed content, distributing software, and publishing media files.
In terms of businesses using CloudFront as their CDN, Linden Lab (the makers of Second Life) use CF for distributing their software client, while storing other files on S3. Amazon also has a very good case study on how photoWALL uses CF (and the other infrastructure AWS offers)
