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Put a CDN in front of your site

A CDN (content delivery network) caches copies of your site at data centers around the world, so visitors are served from somewhere near them — faster pages, less load on your server, and protection against traffic spikes.

When a CDN helps

  • Global audience — visitors far from your server get a slow first byte; a CDN fixes that.
  • Lots of static assets — images, CSS, JS, downloads are served from the edge.
  • Traffic spikes — the CDN absorbs load so your origin stays up.
  • A layer of protection — many CDNs add DDoS mitigation and a WAF.

If your audience is local and traffic is modest, server-side caching and a modern PHP/OPcache setup may be all you need.

How to add one

A CDN sits in front of your OrbixPanel server as a reverse proxy:

  1. Sign up with a CDN provider (Cloudflare has a popular free tier).
  2. Point your domain’s DNS to the CDN (usually by changing nameservers or adding their records).
  3. Set the CDN’s origin to your server’s IP.
  4. Enable HTTPS end-to-end — keep SSL on your origin so the hop from CDN to server is encrypted too.

Visitors now hit the CDN edge; cache misses fall through to your server.

Watch out for

  • Real visitor IPs — behind a CDN, your server sees the CDN’s IP. Use the provider’s forwarded-IP header if your app needs the real client IP (and so fail2ban bans the right address).
  • Caching dynamic pages — cache static assets aggressively; be careful caching logged-in or personalized pages.
  • Purge on deploy — clear the CDN cache after you ship changes, or add asset versioning so updates show up.

Running OrbixPanel? Keep origin SSL on and put any CDN in front. OrbixPanel.com → — the free, self-hosted, AI-powered hosting control panel.