This guide is for you, if you already use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to deliver your site. We will use Akamai as an example how to use wao.io with your existing CDN.
Existing configuration in the CDN prior to using wao.io
We have a site that we want to optimize by using wao.io. The website is called www.makemywebsitefaster.com. The site is already configured in Akamai Ion and delivered via HTTPS.
The DNS record for www.makemywebsitefaster.com points to makemywebsitefaster.edgekey.net, which is our Edge Hostname in Akamai.
In Akamai we use the origin origin www.makemywebsitefaster.com as the location where the website is hosted.
The configuration of the origin in the Akamai Control Center looks like this:
1. Create a site in wao.io
First you need to create your site in wao.io. Just put your origin address in the Origin field as you would when configuring wao.io without a CDN.
In our example, we will set our origin to server origin www.makemywebsitefaster.com which we also use as the origin in Akamai at the moment:
Now you can configure wao.io with the optimizations and features you want and save the domain.
After saving the domain, you will get this error:
This is expected behaviour as the DNS record still points to Akamai and will also do so in the future. Please ignore this error when using wao.io behind a CDN.
You can now test the site configuration locally with the following entry to the hosts file (e.g. /etc/hosts ) with an entry corresponding to one of the IP addresses of wao.io:
185.159.110.6 www.makemywebsitefaster.com
2. Changing the origin in the CDN
Now we have to change the origin in the CDN to point to wao.io instead of our original origin, which now serves as the origin for wao.io.
You will use global.wao.zone as our new origin server. If you want to use SSL you will also have to change some of the settings regarding origin SSL verification.
The configuration of the origin would now look like this in our example using Akamai:
You can now save the new version of the configuration and deploy it to the Akamai staging environment. For reference how to test your configuration in the Akamai staging environment, please see this excellent guide from Akamai.
With the correct entry in your hosts file according to the documentation, you should be able to browse the website trough Akamai and wao.io.
You should also be able to see delivered pages in the analytics section in wao.io:
When your testing is successful, you can deploy your configuration to the Akamai production environment.
Benefits:
- Even faster load times
- Improved image compression
- Less bandwidth used (= lower bill with your CDN provider)
- Deeper insights into your infrastructure
Notes
Using wao.io with a CDN in front of it is easy and relatively straightforward and you should have no trouble adapting this guide to any other CDN provider. If you have any questions regarding using wao.io with the CDNs, please contact us.
As there are plenty of CDN providers out there, we cannot provide detailed instructions for all of them but we are happy to help.
