How to set up W3 Total cache with MaxCDN

What is CDN?

CDN stands for a Content Delivery network, and MaxCDN is one of the providers out there. Modern websites use a lot of media content, which causes a high response time and high bandwidth. Not to mention that visitors from the other side of the planet will experience much slover reponse times. The obvious solution is data decentralisation. However buying high-end servers around the world is not an option for an average blogger or webshop owner – not to mention the misery of keeping the data synchronized.

MaxCDN takes a step ahead, for a minimal fee, they will host your files on their own servers, and each of your visitors will get served by their location – amazingly fast. This is a very convenient solution.

First of all: Creating a pull zone

See this article: How to create a pull zone

Installing W3 Total Cache

This plugin's features are amazing. For the best, it supports most of the CDN providers as well as MaxCDN.

Step 1. – find it & install it

In the plugin manager click on the Add New button and search for “W3 Total Cache” and click on the “Install now” link:

Installing W3 Total Cache

Step 2. – Authorize MaxCDN

On the “Performace” Menu click on the CDN link. This will lead you to the W3 total cache CDN options page. Scroll down to the Configuration tab:

CDN configuration

Click on the Authorize button to authorize MaxCDN with the plugin:

Authorization

On the popout window copy the authorization key. You might need to log in if you haven't already.

Authorization key

Go back to your WordPress backend tab and paste the authorization key to the “Authorization key” text field.

Paste key

Go back onto your MaxCDN configuration panel and open up the “Pull Zones” option. Copy the url by the CDN URL field.

Pull requests tab

Once again navigate back to your WordPress backend and Paste the url to the “Replace site's hostname with” field. Click on the Test MaxCDN. After a few seconds a green Test Passed text should appear!