Speed up your site with a CDN 2015-07-18

[sross]

Did you read this manual?
https://www.keycdn.com/support/xenforo-cdn-integration/

The only thing I had not done was:

Important: When using avatars in Xenforo, the feature Ignore Query String needs to be disabled. It’s recommended to purge the whole zone after this zone change.

It seems to be taking a while to deploy so maybe that is helping. Is there a way to view what files are in my cache? ftp to my keycdn still shows an empty directory even after re-deploying. It finished redeploying, I tried switching config and settings to keycdn and nope, broken images everywhere

Might have to give up on keycdn and see if maxcdn will work, the pull does not seem to be working. everything is a MISS (site name removed):

2016-02-21 02:58:07 usse 71.17.87.90 CA site.kxcdn.com MISS 404 GET /styles/site/xengallery/AjaxLoader.gif

2016-02-21 02:58:06 usse 71.17.87.90 site CA .kxcdn.com MISS 404 GET /styles/site/xenforo/gradients/category-23px-light.png

2016-02-21 02:58:06 usse 71.17.87.90 CA site.kxcdn.com MISS 404 GET /styles/site/xenforo/avatars/avatar_male_s.png

 

[sross]

ok same exact issues with MaxCDN. All I can think is my site has something that prevents the cdn zone from pulling the data? maybe something in htaccess?

ok hmm maybe i need a CNAME record..

emailing maxcdn, they see all the correct caching, waiting for them to look at my server and see why it's not serving properly.

ok fixed. was a basic misconfig on my part. instructions stated to add the cdn url supplied by them to the config.php what was supplied did not contain http:// and once i added that it all kicked in..

 

[AppleAndMango]

I have a problem... I've followed the guide though once I enable the use of the CDN my site looks odd.. All the images are where they should be though it's like something is missing.

For example... This page looks a bit odd compared to how it's actually supposed to look which is like this.

Ideas?

 

[Mouth]

All the images are where they should be though it's like something is missing.

Can you be more descriptive about what your expecting? I had a look @ https://veganforum.co.uk/ and couldn't see any CDN active.

 

[AppleAndMango]

Can you be more descriptive about what your expecting? I had a look @ https://veganforum.co.uk/ and couldn't see any CDN active.

I've disable it as it's making the site appear weird, I can enable it again and take another screen shot?

 

[Arty]

Wrong navigation layout in that style means this javascript file didn't load: https://veganforum.co.uk/styles/simplicity/xenforo/js/style-min.js?_v=67cbd903

 

[Anthony Parsons]

I've followed the guide though once I enable the use of the CDN my site looks odd

Honestly, you're better off not using a CDN specifically, and instead register for a free cloudflare account, which encompasses CDN and handles JS & CSS compression much better than most tools ever do. You get better performance from cloudflare, freely.

I use cloudflare on all my sites and have zero issue since changing away from CDN (keycdn I used) to cloudflare. Users have also been much happier. The only difference is that it takes you 48hrs to prime their name servers they give you (add them as additionals to your domain), then remove your default ones and enable cloudflare after that time to ensure zero downtime. People get a little nervous using their DNS, but to be honest, I've not had an issue and they're if not the largest CDN on the www.

 

[Mouth]

Honestly, you're better off not using a CDN specifically, and instead register for a free cloudflare account, which encompasses CDN and handles JS & CSS compression much better than most tools ever do. You get better performance from cloudflare, freely.

Until you do have problems and find you get very little support from them and your site traffic is all proxied through them.
Even xenforo.com cannot get Cloudflare working correctly for them, with it giving errors and timeouts all the time.

You get better performance from cloudflare, freely.

Nope, you get what you pay for.

 

[AppleAndMango]

I have a problem... I've followed the guide though once I enable the use of the CDN my site looks odd.. All the images are where they should be though it's like something is missing.

For example... This page looks a bit odd compared to how it's actually supposed to look which is like this.

Ideas?

Noob mistake, if your site runs on https you obviously need to add an "s" to the end of http with the Xenforo config file you added lines to.

// CDN support
$config['externalDataUrl'] = 'https://[ZoneURL]/data';
$config['javaScriptUrl'] = 'https://[ZoneURL]/js';

 

[Fred.]

Until you do have problems and find you get very little support from them and your site traffic is all proxied through them.
Even xenforo.com cannot get Cloudflare working correctly for them, with it giving errors and timeouts all the time.

Nope, you get what you pay for.

I agree, I also see those Cloudflare error almost every day here on this forum. (Australia)

But It's true that they seems to have one of the fastest DNS services available.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

Nope, you get what you pay for.

Interesting. I have all 34 of my sites running through cloudflare, linked via my ServInt account, and not a single issue to date. Only my main forum is using their paid level, the rest are free. Zero issue, zero user notices for any error page to date. I've never seen one myself for any of my sites.

You can see the status from https://www.cloudflarestatus.com and any issue that arises, they either quickly reroute any local services or have a fix near immediately if the servers are still handling the capacity without issue.

 

[Mouth]

You can see the status from https://www.cloudflarestatus.com and any issue that arises, they either quickly reroute any local services or have a fix near immediately if the servers are still handling the capacity without issue.

Except that shows things are fine, when clearly through users experiences they are not.

 

[Fred.]

It doesn't say there are problems in Sydney.

 

[CTXMedia]

I'm giving KeyCDN a try with my cooking forum as it has a wider global audience (I got a $10 credit by following your affiliate link @Mouth).

I set it up and hour or so ago and am still seeing a lot of MISS entries in the real-time log (but 200 status code) so I presume this is just first-time requests at the various KeyCDN cache servers and further requests, through those specific servers, will result in HITs?

 

[Mouth]

I presume this is just first-time requests at the various KeyCDN cache servers and further requests, through those specific servers, will result in HITs?

Yes.

 

[CTXMedia]

Yes.

Thanks. I noticed over the course of the day that the majority MISSes gave way to progressively more and more HITs. I've just purged the zone though because I hadn't noticed that Ignore Query String needed to be disabled, and hadn't realised I could change the X-Pull Key value to brand it with the site name.

It's a pretty good interface and seems relatively painless to set-up and manage - and having found the Zonealiases section I've also set-up a CNAME record to brand the CDN URL from cookingbites-3899.kxcdn.com -to- cdn.cookingbites.com

So far, so good. If it works out okay I'll give it a try with CycleChat as we have a number of members from Canada, Australia and the US who might benefit from having the static content more locally delivered.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

It doesn't say there are problems in Sydney.

Interesting... never seen that for this site, and I'm in Melbourne, so pretty much going out of Sydney also.

 

[Fred.]

Interesting... never seen that for this site, and I'm in Melbourne, so pretty much going out of Sydney also.

Sydney is another pop, Seen errors when I was in Melbourne too a month ago.
Mike is working with Cloudflare to fix it so hopefully it will be fixed soon.

 

[CTXMedia]

Just want to confirm with those of you who've used CDNs for a while - when I update one of my XF forums, do I need to completely purge the Zone for that site? Presumably the purge removes all traces of the currently cached files and redownloads them again as and when they are requested?

 

[Jeremy P]

XenForo automatically appends cache-busting query strings to resource URLs, so as long as you don't have the CDN configured to ignore query strings then you shouldn't have to purge anything.