[How to] Enable MaxCDN in Website using W3 Total Cache Plugin

As you all know , Site loading speed has became one of the factors for Search Engine Ranking . Apart from ranking , it also helps in User experience which affects the bounce rate of the website . There are many tools available online to check your website speed .

Some of the tools are :

http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_test

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

http://submitplus.com/freeloadtest.php

If you are thinking of optimising your website through CDN , then this tutorial will help you out in achieving it .

This tutorial will show you how to enable MaxCDN  in website with W3 Total Cache plugin .MaxCDN offers “Origin Pull” CDN account  which Rackspace Cloud and Amazon cloud front doesn’t.

Enable MaxCDN in website with W3 Total Cache plugin :

Step 1: Login into your MAXCDN account using your credentials .

Step 2 :Go to Manage Zones –> Pull Zones –> Click Create New Pull Zone .

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Take down above details in  notepad as it is useful for creation of CNAME record .

Step 3 :  To create CNAME record , login into your hosting account( In our case , its Hostgator).

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Click “Simple DNS ZONE Editor”  . Enter required information as shown below .

Note : Enter CNAME as provided in your MAXCDN account .

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Step 4 : Login into your WordPress account and install W3-Total-Cache Plugin .

Go to W3-Total-Cache plugin’s settings & in General Settings menu , change CDN Type as NETDNA/ MAXCDN .

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Similarly , Change API ID and API Key  & change the Hostname which is under CDN menu as mentioned in MaxCDN .

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Get the API ID and API Key in MaxCDN network by navigating through My-Settings->API-> Add Key .

Note :  Before you click ” Save all settings ” , Click “Test NetDNA” to check whether all the above details are correct . If everything is fine then it will show ” Test Passed”  otherwise you have to check the details again in your MaxCDN account .

That’s it done . CDN has been successfully setup.

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