This article really doesn't have anything to say other than they found a new feature, and we should install it. What was the speed difference? Did it alleviate load on their servers?<p>I spoke to my web host about mod_pagespeed before, they reported that it was far too buggy to be used just yet. Just an anecdote, but I happen to like my host a lot.
How is this different from simply creating a sub-domain on your server for CDN-like functions?<p>For example, Google's "Page Speed, Performance Best Practices" recommends setting up your own sub-domain(s) to serve static content[1]. Yahoo! recommends using a CDN service provider[2], but the general idea of using other domains to serve static content is the same.<p>Also, some static content can be referenced from third-party hosts, such as jQuery on Google Code or Twitter's Bootstrap CSS on GitHub.<p>As an aside, I'm surprised that, seemingly, a large number of web developers have never heard of - or read - the performance best practices from Google or Yahoo!.<p>1. <a href="http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/rtt.html#ParallelizeDownloads" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/rtt.html#Parall...</a><p>2. <a href="http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#cdn" rel="nofollow">http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#cdn</a>
Funny how I made a couple of busy sites faster recently by taking them off CDN and just moving them to a faster, better configured server instead (that ironically was less expensive). All the CDN in the world would not have made them as fast as they are now.<p>Unless your site is heavily image based, I simply do not understand CDN for static content.<p>If you are trying to trick browsers into accepting more connections, first ask yourself why your site is so poorly designed that it needs so many connections - then if necessary use additional domains pointing to your own servers.
Mildly off-topic.<p>We've been using maxCDN since its not terribly expensive to use for the entire year, and since its being used with Wordpress site we've coupled that with a caching plugin and also incorporated CloudFlare. maxCDN seems to be very good for caching static content such as js and css files, but i dont believe it caches the html itself nor does Cloudflare. Thats only being done locally.<p>I do wonder if there is some other service out there, thats not terribly expensive that caches html too. Ive noticed even with a CDN and services like CloudFlare, if you dont have a dedicated server to handle the high html load requirement the setup is going to fail.<p>I'll be interested to learn if anyone has any further experience with things like nginx or varnish to cache their html and what services in their cloud they are using to achieve this.
Related question: I started playing with mod_pagespeed when it first came out, however at the time it was very buggy and broke RichFaces based apps, PHP Gallery, and a few WordPress plugins that sites I host run, so I had to ditch it. That was ages ago though. Has anyone been running a recent version of it? What is your feedback?
Call me paranoid but I would rather not see this being utilized to much. Personally I block Google Analytics (along other tracking scripts) and many people use Adblock. If you start moving your important scripts and stylesheets to Google they will still be able to track you throughout the web.
If you need a CDN you most likely can afford to pay for one. No?
I mean even if you're just loading your images through S3 unless you're getting some crazy number of hits it's only going to cost you a few bucks a month. I'm all for CDNs however many people think that you need it (thanks to yslow and google) for a basic website and it's just not the case. if you're not under a high traffic situation that extra hop can actually make your site slower than if you just served the files from your server.<p>If you're on a php/database driven site (early on) I would be willing to wager that your optimization time would be better spent following that string. If your website can only handle 25 hit/s because you're killing MySQL with SELECT* FROM <i></i>ALL<i></i> type commands the CDN is not going to do you much good. After you're sure your code is optimized and you feel you need it, sure have at it! there are plenty of good CDNs out there.