Static Sites in Cloud Storage.

Most of today's Web sites are dynamic. Their pages are generated on the server side, and then displayed in the user's browser. Many of these sites operate on the basis of simple and user-friendly CMS (content management systems) in the composition of which is usually included WISYWYG-editor, simple and intuitive. Despite the apparent simplicity of working with dynamic sites raises a number of inconveniences.

The functioning of a dynamic site is provided "bundle" of the Web server application to generate pages and databases. The interaction of all these components is often associated with serious cost of system resources. To reduce the load and reduce the generation of pages, caching, but it can be used not always and not everywhere. Typically cached content having a large amount - for example, drawing. Also caching is necessary to minimize the number of database queries.

Some difficulties are also setting up a web server and software. In addition, dynamic websites are vulnerable to DDoS-attacks.

In connection with all the described disadvantages and difficulties in recent years greatly increased interest in the static site. A static website is a set of files (HTML, JS, graphics, fonts), placed on the server. For its maintenance does not require much system resources; with backup also does not cause any difficulties. Pages for such sites can be created and edited in any text editor.

To join the content with templates you can use the so-called generators of static sites. Generators there are so many (one of only GitHub published several dozen). The most common and popular are Hyde, written in Python, and Jekyll and MiddleMan, written in Ruby.

Review all existing generators of static sites goes far beyond the scope of this article; all interested reader is referred to detailed comparative table.

There are a number of categories of sites, which are much more convenient to do static: websites, business cards, blogs, catalogs, online documentation for software products and technical devices. For such sites may require dynamic part - comments, search, private office user, the creation of pages, but it could be implemented with the help of third-party tools, copes with the tasks incumbent upon them.
We offer a platform for their own static sites, a fairly simple and easy to use. It is about our cloud storage. Below we will discuss the benefits of using our repository for hosting static websites. For readers who want to try to place the repository in your own website, we provide a detailed step by step instructions.

Connecting to the Cloud Storage CDN.

On any website there is a fair share of "heavy" static content: JavaScript-libraries, CSS, graphics, various binaries ... Storage and distribution of this content is always associated with certain problems: all this we have already been contacted and told how their It can be solved by using our cloud storage.

Difficulties with the distribution of static increase with increasing site traffic. The load on the server increases, the page load time increases, users experience more inconvenience ... Enormous role played by geography: the further the user is from the server that hosts the site, the slower he works.

Geographical distance from end users hinders the development of many Web projects and expand their audience. In many regions of the world still lacks the ability to high-speed Internet connection. For example, residents of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk almost do not listen to Internet radio and watch videos online: service providers in these regions do not offer unlimited tariffs. Meanwhile, the share of "heavy" content on the Internet is growing, and the low rate of delivery in the current conditions is unacceptable.

Today we are prepared to help our customers to overcome the distance and ensure the delivery of static content at maximum speed. We are connected to our CDN cloud storage powered by Akamai.

Seconds are everything

It seems to be 4 seconds - it is very small. But according to statistics, if any Web page loads even for a few milliseconds longer than this time, users will go with her - and never returned. For commercial web projects can turn into extra seconds and financial losses.

Search engines tend to prefer fast works. Firstly, the load time is taken into account in ranking formulas. Secondly, we should not overlook the behavioral factor: people leaving the page loads slowly, it reduces the "weight" to the search engines. Slowly working site is unlikely to become really popular among a broad user audience. Experience shows that the speed of operation significantly increases the attractiveness of web services to the public (see. Eg, interesting stuff here).

Slow download speed significantly reduces the effectiveness of contextual and banner advertising. When visitors come through advertisements, but the fully loaded website are not waiting, it means that the money invested in advertising, in fact turn out to be wasted: the user never sees what he has seen.
These examples are more than convincing evidence that low download speed naturally entails serious problems.

Of course, the Internet every day is becoming faster and cheaper, but the inconvenience of an abundance of "heavy" content and the slow rate of its load, still do not disappear. Many sites, rich graphics and animations, with great difficulty, with the opening of mobile devices, if the connection is made via the 3G-network.
With CDN can solve all the problems described above and to make the site could be downloaded quickly from anywhere.

How does CDN

Abbreviation is CDN content delivery network - Content Delivery Network. CDN is a geographically distributed network of the main assembly (Eng. Origin), and caching nodes (Eng. Edges) - points of presence, which can be located in various parts of the world. That they are cached all the most "heavy" elements of the site. When accessing the main server the user will be redirected to the nearest point of presence. Thanks to this network path between servers is reduced, and the site is much faster from a user perspective.