WordPress is an open source CMS (Content Management System) that makes it easy to create and publish a blog site. First released in 2003, WordPress now drives more than 202 million sites worldwide. Powered by PHP and MYSQL, WordPress makes installation, upgrade and maintenance very easy for new and experienced webmasters alike.

How does WordPress maintain its CMS-of-choice position among A-list bloggers? There are many reasons, but most can be distilled into a single word – plugins. Developed by WordPress and its devoted programmer community, these plugins allow bloggers and site owners unlimited opportunities to customize and fine-tune their sites, thus making each site unique among the millions found in today’s blogosphere.

And the long answer is … yes! W3 Total Cache, created by Frederick Townes and a long time MaxCDN customer, created his popular WordPress plugin to allow direct content delivery into any WordPress installation without any special knowledge or programming required.

The W3 Total Cache plugin is being used on Mashable.com, WebsiteDesignerDepot.com, Yoast.com and Personified.com. All of these sites have enjoyed a tangible 10x performance boost thanks to the W3 Total Cache feature set.

This robust plugin supports CDN integration of mirror buckets/zones and ftp push buckets/zones, too. W3 Total Cache takes a three-stage approach to getting WordPress files and scripts to load super-fast:

• Stage #1 caches the content delivery on the network level.
• Stage #2 caches the local page on the server level.
• Stage #3 caches the database that optimizes the WordPress queries.

Another favorite WordPress feature is the ability to move posts and attachments over to CDN by ftp or URL rewriting. W3 Total Cache can take any WordPress media library file and automatically ftp it to the chosen content delivery network account – without any user intervention. Now when the media file (audio, video, or picture) is called again, it loads directly from the CDN rather than the local server. What a time and local storage space saver!

Like WordPress itself, W3 Total Cache is compatible with all server types, including but not limited to shared hosting, virtual private servers and dedicated servers / clusters. Its MaxCDN integration allows you to use a:

• Pull Zone using your origin server to grab content, or
• Push Zone where you upload content to our storage server and we push out the content to our edge locations around the world.

Create a zone in your MaxCDN control panel, and watch your WordPress get ready to rumble.

We would never advocate for one plugin over another. We can say, though, that most MaxCDN customers who manage WordPress sites prefer the W3 Total Cache solution because integration is 1-2-3 done deal. My-CDN is a fine WordPress plugin, but limited to providing only CDN integration.

There are many WordPress CDN plugins available, but only a small handful that get high marks from the WordPress user community. W3 Total Cache and My-CDN are both excellent choices. We encourage you to try them out and see which one works best for you.