Have you implemented our built-in BunnyCDN from your control panel on your website but you still feel like it's loading slowly? We monitor our network 24/7, making sure things work fast and in most cases, we find slowdowns to be caused by incorrect configuration. This article contains useful tips on what might be wrong, what to check and how to fix it.
- Check your cache hit rate
- Check for 301 redirects and your origin URL
- Compress and resize your images
- Reduce the number of plugins (WordPress)
- Switch to a Premium tier pull zone and enable the correct pricing zones.
- Check your server CPU usage and performance
- Check your DNS configuration
- Reduce the number of JavaScript scripts in the head of your page
- Have you just added your pull zone? Give it a bit of time
- Check our status page
- Open a support ticket
Check your cache hit rate
The first thing we recommend is to check your cache hit rate in the BunnyCDN statistics page. Low cache hit rate means our servers have to continually fetch files from your origin URL which can cause high wait times. If you are seeing a suspiciously low cache hit rate, such as below 70% it could indicate something wrong with your configuration. Be sure to head read our article explaining how to improve your cache HIT rate.
Check for 301 redirects and your origin URL
Another common issue we see is that the incorrect origin URL is added that results in your server returning a 301 redirect response instead of the actual file that our server needs. This means our server will only cache and respond with the redirect code, not the actual file. This will actually slow down your website. Always make sure your origin URL is set correctly and allows our edge servers to download the file.
Compress and resize your images
If your website is heavy on graphic content, it could simply be that your network takes a while to download them. We suggest using one of the website performance diagnostic tools to check if your website is serving images that either too big or have a very big file size. You should always make sure to serve images that are correctly fitted for your website and use one of the optimized image formats such as jpeg or png.
Reduce the number of plugins (WordPress)
If your website is using WordPress, make sure to disable all the plugins that you don't actually use or need. Sometimes users will install a large number of WordPress plugins which can drastically reduce the performance of your website.
Switch to a Premium tier pull zone and enable the correct pricing zones.
Volume zones are optimized to offer a good price-performance ratio but don't give the best performance in areas that have high regional costs such as South America or Asia. If these are your targeted audiences, we would strongly suggest using a Premium zone.
Also, make sure that you have all the pricing zones enabled where your users are coming from in order to guarantee the best performance.
Check your server CPU usage and performance
BunnyCDN will make sure your static files are delivered with lightning fast speeds, however, if your web server takes a long time to render the HTML code for your website, there's not much we can do. We suggest using one of the website performance diagnostic tools and checking the waterfall display to see which requests take the most time. Usually, a slow server will show up as a slow first request in the timeline. If you suspect this might be the problem, check your hosting provider or server to see if the server is overloaded.
Using a custom hostname as a root domain?
If you are using a custom CDN hostname for your pull zone that isn't a subdomain (cdn.mywebsite.com) but instead the root domain itself, also known as naked domain (mywebsite.com for example) this might severely impact the BunnyCDN performance. Naked domains don't support CNAME records, so DNS providers will try to resolve the CNAME field and return it as an A record value. In some cases, this could mean that all the requests will go to just one or two of our PoPs which will practically negate any effects of using BunnyCDN. If you are unsure if this is the case with your provider we would strongly to use a subdomain instead of a naked domain. Using for example www.mywebsite.com already resolves this problem.
Reduce the number of JavaScript scripts in the head of your page
Another thing we suggest checking is the number of JavaScript links in the head of your page. These will actually block the loading of your website until all of them are loaded. If you have a large number of JavaScript libraries loading in the head of your page this can delay your website load time by a substantial amount. We suggest batching JavaScript scripts into as little files as possible to minimize the effect on your website load time.
Have you just added your pull zone? Give it a bit of time
Have you just created your pull zone? Make sure to give our system a bit of time to cache your content. We usually see the most benefits appear globally anywhere from a few minutes up to a few days depending on the size of your content the amount of traffic your website receives.
Check our status page
If you think your problem doesn't fit any of these issues, check our Network Status page within your control panel for any problems with our network. If we are performing any maintenance or face problems this will be listed on this page.
Open a support ticket
Finally, if all else fails, don't be shy and open a support ticket. We always make sure things work fast and will do everything in our power to make sure your pull zone works fast. You can do this directly in the support hub by pressing on the Submit a request button in the top menu of the page.
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