By leveraging next-gen CDNs, such as Accelerate CDN, companies can offer faster and more dependable content delivery. This not only helps to make websites load faster but also improves website security and enables further global reach that can optimize websites for various platforms, scenarios, and devices.

In this article, we will delve into the benefits of leveraging Accelerate CDN to enhance your website’s performance.

Why do you need a CDN for your website?

Think of your website as your storefront. It is where you showcase your products, tell people about your services. It also represents your brand identity to your customers and potential customers.

Now, how well does your website perform under heavy traffic (or a sudden traffic spike) and security threats? If you want to have a website optimized for these things, you will need to leverage a content delivery network.

What is a Content Delivery Network (CDN)?

CDN, in a nutshell, is a network of servers that deliver your website content to your users based on their geographic location. This helps reduces the latency and bandwidth consumption of your website, thus making it faster and more responsive.

On top of that, CDN also provides security features such as encryption, firewall, and DDoS protection, protecting your website from cyberattacks.

Types of CDNs

CDNs can be generally classified into three types based on how they store and deliver content:

• Push CDNs: These CDNs require you to upload your content to their servers or data centers manually or via FTP. Push CDNs are suitable for large and infrequently updated files.
• Pull CDNs: These CDNs automatically fetch your content from your origin server when a user requests it. Pull CDNs are suitable for small and frequently updated files.
• Hybrid CDNs: These CDNs combine the features of push and pull CDNs, allowing you to customize your content delivery based on your needs.

Understanding Next-Gen CDNs

When it comes to Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), not all of them are created equal. Conventional CDNs have limitations, such as restricted geographic coverage, sluggish speeds, and a lack of flexibility. Therefore, you should consider investing in a next-generation CDN, such as gcore.com.

Well, what are next-gen CDNs, you’d ask?

A next-gen CDN takes advantage of artificial intelligence and edge computing to distribute your website content across multiple edge locations worldwide. An edge location is a server closer to your users than your origin server, where your website content is stored.

And they generally offer the following advantages:

• Multinational reach: A next-gen CDN has servers in every continent and region, ensuring that your website content reaches your users no matter where they are.
• Fast speeds: A next-gen CDN uses advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and edge computing to optimize website delivery and performance.
• Flexible content delivery: A next-gen CDN allows you to customize your content delivery based on your users’ preferences, devices, and network conditions.

One great example of a next-gen CDN is Accelerate CDN. It is a content delivery network powered by artificial intelligence that can boost your website’s performance, security, and scalability.

Benefits of Leveraging Accelerate CDN for Your Website

Using a next-gen CDN solution like Accelerate CDN can positively impact your website’s success. In this section, you will learn how leveraging Accelerate CDN can improve your website’s user experience and engagement.

1. Global Reach for Your Website

Next-gen Accelerate CDNs are designed to serve website content to users from geographically distributed points of presence (POPs). This ensures that website visitors worldwide receive the same high-quality experience as those in the same region as the origin server. Here are some of the ways that next-gen CDNs offer global reach for your website:

Multiple Edge Locations

Accelerate CDNs leverage multiple edge locations to distribute website content across regions, countries, and continents. These edge locations are strategically placed worldwide to ensure that website content is delivered with low-latency access to users.

Geographically Distributed Points of Presence (POPs)

Next-gen Accelerate CDN has geographically distributed points of presence (PoPs) that act as delivery hubs for website content. PoPs are network nodes that cache and deliver content to nearby users, reducing the distance and time required for data transmission. These PoPs are equipped with powerful caching servers that store website content and serve it to users with low latency.

Low-Latency Access

By leveraging multiple edge locations and geographically distributed PoPs, next-gen CDN enables website owners to deliver content to users across regions, countries, and continents with low-latency access. This means website visitors worldwide can access content quickly and easily, regardless of location.

Improved Website Performance

Accelerate CDNs improve website performance by reducing latency and increasing website speed. By caching website content at edge locations and POPs, next-gen CDNs ensure website visitors receive content quickly and efficiently.

2. Blazing Fast Speeds for Your Website

When it comes to website performance, speed is king. Slow-loading pages can turn away visitors and negatively impact user experience. Accelerate CDNs offer a range of speed optimization features to help websites achieve lightning-fast load times and better overall performance. Next-gen CDNs offer various features to optimize the speed of your website, including:

Content caching

Accelerate Next-gen CDN stores copies of static content, such as images, CSS, and JavaScript files, on their servers or data centers near your users. This reduces the distance and time required for data transmission and lowers the load on your origin server. This means that when a user requests the content, it is served from the nearest edge location rather than the origin server, resulting in faster load times.

Content compression

Compression reduces the size of files transferred between the origin server and the end user, resulting in faster load times. Next-gen CDNs can compress your content before delivering it to your users, reducing your content’s size and bandwidth consumption. Compression techniques such as gzip and brotli can reduce the size of your content by up to 90% without sacrificing quality.

Image optimization

Images are essential to many websites, but they can load slowly. AccelerateCDNs can optimize your images for faster loading and better quality. Image optimization features include resizing, cropping, scaling, format conversion, quality adjustment, and lazy loading.

Faster Page Load Times

With the help of speed optimization features, Next-gen CDNs help websites load faster, which, in return, returns a lower bounce rate, higher engagement, and more conversions.

Dynamic Content Acceleration

Accelerate CDNs also help speeds up dynamic content of websites, such as HTML pages, API calls, and user-generated content. Its features may include the following: TCP optimization, SSL offloading, request routing, and edge computing.

3. Accelerating Visual Services for Your Website

Visual services are applications designed to deliver content that includes high-resolution videos and graphic materials like 4K streaming, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR). To ensure users get to enjoy immersive and lifelike experiences, these services need a robust infrastructure with high bandwidth, minimal latency, and exceptional quality of experience (QoE).

However, them over traditional CDNs can be challenging due to the following factors:

• The large content size increases the network load and the buffering time.
• The dynamic nature of the user interactions requires low-latency feedback and synchronization.
• The network congestion and variability, which affects the content quality and availability.

Next-gen CDNs can overcome these challenges by leveraging edge computing and network-slicing technologies.

Edge computing

This enables next-gen CDNs to deploy servers or data centers closer to the end users, reducing the distance and time required for data transmission.

Network slicing

Network slicing allows next-gen CDNs to allocate dedicated network resources for visual services, ensuring optimal performance and availability.

Both edge computing and network slicing allow the latest content delivery networks (CDNs) to boost the speed of visual services right at the edge of the network, significantly improving the user experience and engagement. These advanced CDNs are also capable of more complex features such as adjusting the streaming quality based on your internet speed (adaptive bitrate streaming), optimizing content for better performance, and ensuring security for visual services.

4. Flexible Content Delivery for Your Website

The next-generation Accelerate CDN offers another advantage – it ensures flexible content delivery for your website. This simply means it’s capable of customizing content delivery to match different devices, platforms, user preferences, and content delivery rules.

A study by Econsultancy and Adobe found that an impressive 91% of consumers prefer to shop with brands that present them with relevant offers and suggestions. So, by using a next-gen CDN, you could potentially see a positive effect on your website’s ability to attract and keep customers.

Next-gen Accelerate CDN offers various features to enable flexible content delivery, including:

Content Routing

Next-gen CDNs can dynamically route content requests to the nearest or best-performing server or data center based on various factors, such as network conditions, user location, device type, and content type. Content routing can improve your content’s speed, performance, and availability. This helps reduce latency and ensures fast and reliable content delivery.

Content Customization

Next-gen CDNs have the capability to tailor your website’s content to fit the user’s device, their browser, and the conditions of their network. This approach significantly boosts user engagement and experience by offering personalized and pertinent content.

For instance, the Accelerate CDN can effortlessly adjust images to suit the user’s device and browser, including operations like resizing, cropping, scaling, and converting images.

API Integration

Accelerate CDN also offer API integration, allowing owners and developers to automate and customize content delivery based on specific rules, i.e., traffic volume, content type, or user behavior.

This allows websites to be more responsive and adaptive to user needs while, at the same time, reducing the workload on the website’s backend infrastructure.

Real-time content updates

The Accelerate CDN can also execute JavaScript code at the network’s edge, allowing developers to tweak your content instantly. It can perform content updating in real-time without impacting the cache performance or needing any manual adjustments. Any updates made to the website, like rolling out new products, running promotions, or making announcements, can be immediately seen by all users, no matter where they are or what device they’re using.

5. Better SEO Performance for Your Website

SEO is optimizing your website for search engines like Google to rank higher and attract more organic traffic.

One factor that affects your SEO performance is the speed and performance of your website. A fast and responsive website can

• improve your user experience.
• reduce your bounce rate.
• increase your conversion rate.
• signal to search engines that your website is reliable and user-friendly.

This is where Accelerate CDN can help you, in the following ways.

Content Compression

Accelerate CDN can compress your content before delivering it to your users, reducing your content’s size and bandwidth consumption. Compression techniques such as gzip and brotli can reduce the size of your content by up to 90%, improving your page load time and performance score.

Image Optimization

Accelerate CDN can optimize your images for faster loading and better quality. Image optimization features include resizing, cropping, scaling, format conversion, quality adjustment, and lazy loading. These features reduce the loading time required for image assets and, thus, improve user experiences.

SSL offloading

Accelerate CDN can handle the encryption and decryption of SSL/TLS requests, which are used to secure the communication between your website and your users. SSL offloading can reduce the load on your origin server and improve the response time of your website, which can benefit your SEO.

Content distribution

Accelerate CDN has the capability to spread your content across various servers or data centers globally. This feature can help you connect with a broader and more varied audience. Moreover, distributing your content in this way can help you dodge problems related to geographical restrictions and censorship, issues that could negatively impact your SEO results and user satisfaction.

Content security

Accelerate CDN offers a line of defense for your content against harmful attacks like DDoS, SQL injection, and XSS, which could potentially damage your website’s standing and ranking. Its content security tools encompass SSL/TLS encryption, a firewall, a Web Application Firewall (WAF), and DDoS protection. These protective measures can significantly enhance the security of your website, helping to prevent data breaches and minimize downtime.

Cost-Effective Solution for Your Website

The Accelerate CDN is a potent tool to enhance your website’s speed and overall performance, while also offering significant savings on hosting and bandwidth expenses. Crafted to be budget-friendly, Accelerate CDN offers flexible and straightforward pricing plans, tailor-made to fit your specific needs.

Here’s how Accelerate CDN can help you save money:

Flexible Pay-As-You-Go Model

With Accelerate CDN, you only pay for the bandwidth and requests you actually use, without any hidden fees or overage charges. You can easily monitor your usage and costs in real-time on the dashboard and adjust your settings as needed. Plus, you can set up alerts and limits to prevent any unexpected charges.

No Long-Term Contracts

There’s no need to worry about being locked into a long-term contract or minimum commitment with Accelerate CDN. You have the freedom to cancel or change your plan at any time without any penalties or cancellation fees. Plus, you can try Accelerate CDN for free for 14 days before deciding whether to upgrade or downgrade your plan.

Save on Bandwidth Costs

By caching and compressing content, Accelerate CDN helps you reduce bandwidth consumption and costs. It serves content from the closest server or data center and optimizes it for different devices and platforms. This not only lightens the load on your origin server but also decreases the amount of data you have to pay for.

How to Integrate Accelerate CDN into Your Website

Integrating Accelerate CDN into your website is an easy process that can be accomplished through various methods. In this section, we’ll discuss the three most popular integration methods and provide a step-by-step guide on how to integrate Accelerate CDN with your website.

API Integration

API integration involves using the Accelerate CDN API to connect your website to the CDN. This method is suitable for developers who have experience working with APIs. To integrate Accelerate CDN into your website using API integration, follow these steps:

• Get your API credentials from the Accelerate CDN portal
• Use the API documentation to create an integration that can communicate with the CDN
• Test the integration to ensure that it’s working correctly

CMS Plugins

If you’re using a content management system like WordPress or Joomla, you can easily integrate Accelerate CDN into your website using a plugin. To do this, just follow these simple steps:

1. Look for a plugin that works well with your CMS.
2. Install the plugin and make sure to activate it.
3. Input your Accelerate CDN API credentials into the plugin.
4. Set up the plugin to function seamlessly with your website.

CDN Providers

If you’re currently using a different CDN provider and want to switch to Accelerate CDN, simply follow these steps:

1. Get a hold of your existing CDN configuration settings.
2. Sign up for a new account with Accelerate CDN.
3. Adjust the Accelerate CDN settings to match your previous CDN settings.
4. Modify your DNS records, so they point to Accelerate CDN.

Conclusion

Next-generation content delivery networks have revolutionized website performance and user experience. With their global reach, blazing-fast speeds, flexible content delivery, and SEO benefits, these CDNs have become essential tools for website owners. By leveraging the power of next-gen CDNs like Accelerate CDN, businesses can optimize their websites for maximum performance and user engagement.

With the continued growth of online commerce, it is critical for businesses to invest in CDNs that can keep up with the demands of today’s fast-paced digital landscape.

The post Next-gen CDNs: Benefits of Leveraging Accelerate CDN for Your Website appeared first on Hongkiat.

However, there is a simple way to overcome this and all it takes is 5 simple steps. Note that this tip will work only with files kept in Google Drive such as MS Office files, PDF etc. It doesn’t work with Google Docs files.

Step 1

Locate the file inside Google Drive that you want to update. Right click on file and then click Manage versions. This Manage Versions option works only when you are using Google Drive in a web browser.

Step 2

Click on Upload new version.

Step 3

Select the updated file and click Open.

Step 4

Once the new file is uploaded, you can see both newer and older versions of the same file. Both will have the same shareable link.

That’s it! By default, Google Drive will keep older versions of any file for 30 days. You can also download the older version of the file, delete it or keep it forever.

You can also use the above said method to replace files with different formats or names while the shareable link remains the same.

The post How to Update Google Drive Files Without Changing its Links appeared first on Hongkiat.

To enhance its usability and help you get more out of Google Drive there is a large number of different extensions available. In this post, we are showcasings useful Chrome extensions that may help you boost your productivity while working with Google Drive.

DocuSign

DocuSign is a very useful document-signing extension. It allows you to electronically sign documents, or get your documents signed by others inside Google Drive.

You can even check the time status to know when the other person has viewed and signed your document.

Gantter for Google Drive

Whether you are planning for a complex or simple project, Gantter offers almost all the essential features of a cloud-based project management tool without having to pay a single penny.

It can be considered a good alternative to Microsoft Project and, even allows to import and open MS project files.

Simple Invoicing

As the name suggests, it is an easy to use invoicing extension which can be very helpful for freelancers to generate and send invoices of their work. Just fill up the basic information required for invoicing and it will send the invoice on your email address in PDF format to review from where you can forward it to your clients.

Moreover, a copy of all your invoices is also stored automatically in Google Drive by this extension.

Kami

Kami is a very useful cloud-based document viewer and annotation extension. It supports many document formats including PDF, MS Word, Google Docs, RTF, Powerpoint files, Spreadsheets and Image files.

Apart from viewing and annotating documents, you can easily share files with others via collaborating feature of Google Drive. The tool can be very helpful for people working in groups or teams to carry out different tasks.

PDF Compressor

Storage capacity is the prime factor to be considered in Google Drive so why not compress all your PDF files up to 1% of original file size while maintaining quality, with by using the PDF Compressor extension.

You can use choose file option or drag-and-drop approach to upload and compress a document. You can also convert Word, Excel, PPT or JPEG files into PDF using this extension.

Translate for Drive

Usually, you might translate documents on your Google Drive by copy-pasting text into Google Translate, however, if translation of documents is something you need to do frequently, this extension can surely add some ease in your work.

You are only required to locate a document to be translated in Google Drive to get instant translation.

Text Editor

If you view and edit plaintext documents over cloud, this extension may be very helpful for you. It provides an interactive file history indicating which lines are added/removed, and even supports syntax highlighting for numerous programming and scripting languages that may be a striking feature for programmers.

Save to Google Drive

If you are a blogger, writer or researcher who browses through different websites to collect raw data and saves it in Google Drive, this extension may help you a lot by saving the web content including text, images, HTML5 audios and videos and screenshots directly to your Google Drive.

This will not only save your time but will also help to organize all your research work over Google Drive automatically.

Shortcuts for Google

Give a neat look to your Chrome browser and navigate among 250+ Google services by using this extension which offers a pop-up menu of all Google Services under one button.

You can rearrange the order of services in menu which you frequently use, change their URLs and names, or select one of three available sizes for icons.

Drive Template Gallery

Rather than creating documents from scratch, you may browse through Drive Template Gallery, and choose a ready-made template that goes with the type of document you want to work on, from Google Drive Create menu.

You can find a number of templates ranging from documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, resumes, cover letters, birthday cards, invoices etc.

Cometdocs PDF Converter

Cometdocs is a useful document conversion extension. It lets you convert a PDF document into most common MS Office and OpenOffice formats right there in Google Drive.

Furthermore, PDF files can be created from images or other supported document formats. The extension can be very helpful for you if you like to keep most of your documents in Google Drive.

The post 10 Best Chrome Extensions For Google Drive appeared first on Hongkiat.

There would be hardly anything you didn’t know about YouTube, however ShareTube is a completely new thing in the realm of video viewing and sharing services on the web.

Read Also:  How to Download YouTube Videos Without Tools or Extensions

ShareTube is a web service to watch, share and talk about YouTube videos. With this service, you get to watch videos of your choosing in real time with your friends. It’s a relatively new service, and so far, ShareTube has only served less than 40,000 shared video-viewing in what they call Rooms.

ShareTube requires no registration, although you will be prompted for a username. Every time you open the website, a random YouTube video from ShareTube rooms is played at the background of the homepage. Most of the time room name is also mentioned along with the video, so if anyone is interested in watching the video can simply join the room and enjoy the video.

Creating a room

At the ShareTube site<, enter the name of your room (name should either consists of numbers only or text only but not both), click Make a room, write your username and finally press the Enter button to create your ShareTube room.

Once you have created your room, on the top right side, you will see Facebook and Twitter icons to invite your friends from corresponding social networks to join the room or you can share the room name with others so they can join as well. Below these icons, chat textbox is located to comment and discuss about videos.

At the top middle, a YouTube video will be played that is being watched by everyone in the room and below this video you will see a search box where you can enter a YouTube video title or link address, click Submit and finally click Add to Queue below a video you want to add in the playlist.

If you choose a room name which is currently in use for some other room, then it will give you an error and ask you to select another room name.

Joining a room

To join a ShareTube room, enter the room name you want to join in the textbox, click Join a room, write your user name and finally hit Enter on the keyboard.

Once you have joined a room, you will see the same room options discussed earlier.

The room could be either created by one of your friends or a random active room you just joined by looking at the room name in homepage.

What I like about ShareTube

ShareTube is a very interesting service to allow users to watch videos in real-time. The things which I found particularly interesting are:

• It is an ad-free service.
• It has a simple interface which makes it very easy to use.
• A user can add multiple videos in queues.
• Any user can pause the video to give real-time environment feel.
• It does not require any traditional registeration for its use.
• It does not charge you anything at the moment, to use the service.

Improvements expected in future

Although, ShareTube is a cool web service to spend quality time with your friends, while chatting and watching YouTube videos, in real-time, but there are still a few major improvements required to make the service more efficient and user-friendly:

• At times, the website takes a bit longer to load which might be irritating.
• The page where we write our user name should contain an option to proceed further, rather than just relying on the Keyboard Enter button.
• There should be an option to make a room public or private because a user may not want videos from his/her ShareTube room to be played on someone else’s homepage background.
• There should be an option for room admin to kick out annoying users from the room.
• There should be information about developers and their contact details as well on the website.
• Room name of videos playing randomly at the homepage background is sometimes missing, instead, it should be there always.

Conclusion

ShareTube a unique way to watch videos, including your favorite movie, video or a song, online with your friends and loved ones. It offers a number of cool features, however, due to the fact that it is still a budding service, there is a lot of room for improvement.

If you have any experience with ShareTube, do let us know in the comments section.

Read Also:  How to Download Videos From the Browser Cache

The post Watch YouTube Videos Privately with ShareTube appeared first on Hongkiat.

1. Memorializing an Account
2. Choosing a Legacy Contact
3. Deleting Facebook Account After Death

We will be looking at what each path entails and help you decide which of the three options you can pick to not only safeguard your Facebook personal data and privacy, post-death, but also help safeguard your memory.

Read more: Tips to better manage your Facebook feed

1. Memorializing an Account

This is done by one of your friends instead of by yourself. Anyone can inform Facebook (click here) about a Friend’s death and the account will be memorialized.

A memorialized account allows friends and family members to share memories after a person has passed away.

In an account that has been memorialized, the word "Remembering" will appear above the Facebook name like so.

A memorialized account will:

• remain on Facebook and the content shared is visible to all it was shared with
• be a place where Facebook friends can share memories according to the privacy settings of the account
• remain safe and no one can log into it
• cause removal of Facebook Pages, if the person was sole admin of said page

A memorialized account will not:

• appear as suggestions for people to add, or as birthday reminders
• give any option to choose a legacy contact

2. Choosing a Legacy Contact

You can also nominate a legacy contact which will have restricted access to your account. Once a valid request about the death of a person is sent in, the account will be memorialized and the person who is chosen as their legacy contact will be informed.

A legacy contact can:

• respond to friend requests
• pin a post on the timeline
• update the cover photo and profile picture
• download archive of posts, photos and profile information you shared on Facebook (if opted)

A legacy contact cannot:

• see your private messages or login to the account to interact on your behalf
• change settings of your Facebook account

How to Nominate a Legacy Contact

Here is how you can choose a legacy contact for your Facebook account.

(Step 1) Go to Settings > Security > Legacy Contact.

(Step 2) Click on Edit and type in the name you want to select as the Legacy Contact, and click Add.

(Step 3) You can send a message to inform that person of your nomination, or leave a message to be sent only when your account is memorialized.

(Step 4) Remember to set the Data Archive Permission which allows your legacy contact to download an archive of posts, photos and profile information you shared on Facebook.

By default, you will get an annual reminder on who you want to nominate as your legacy contact. If you are sure you won’t need to change your legacy contact or you dont want to be reminded, untick the box.

3. Get Your Facebook Account Deleted After Death

If the two options above aren’t for you and you just want to delete your online presence from Facebook, here’s how you get it deleted after your passing.

Above the Legacy Contact Annual Reminder is the option for Account Deletion. Tick it.

You will be served with a confirmation notice like so. Click Delete After Death and enter your password before you click Submit.

The post Three Ways to Handle Facebook Account for The Deceased appeared first on Hongkiat.