How to create an eCommerce CDN resource

Time to Read: 5 minutes Difficulty Level: Beginner
Tools Needed: Access to your Nublue Billing panel, ability to update DNS for your domain Last Updated: 11/09/2019

Introduction

​This guide will show you how to create an eCommerce CDN record for your site from within your Nublue Billing panel. The process for creating a resource for a SSL-encrypted site is a little different to non-encrypted sites so you’ll need to ensure you follow the correct process for your site.

Create a resource for a HTTPS-secured site
Create a resource for a non-HTTPS site

Create a resource for a HTTPS-secured site

The following process is the method for creating a CDN record for a site that uses SSL-encryption.

1) Log in to your client billing area.

2) Go to ‘Services > My Services’ and click ‘View Details’ to the right of your CDN package.

3) Scroll down and click the ‘New CDN Resource’ button to begin creating a CDN resource.

4) Click the ‘http’ button to create a CDN resource.

5) The following fields need to be completed and steps followed:

- CDN Hostname: choose a single unique word for your CDN resource (‘Nublue’, for example) to be prefixed to your CDN SSL hostname, and enter this. With this done, you don’t need to make any changes to your DNS settings.

- Origin(s): specify your website’s domain name in the format of ‘mydomain.com’, without ‘https://’ or ‘www.’

- SSL Mode: to ensure that your CDN content (image files, JavaScript and CSS for example) serves securely over https, check that ‘SSL Mode – With SSL (advanced)’ is selected.

6) Next, scroll down and tick the Edge Groups you wish to use. These determine the continents where you’d like your site’s content served at an accelerated speed. You would generally tick all of these, unless there are specific continents that you don’t wish your site to target.

7) Click ‘Create CDN Resource’.

8) Now you’ll need to find your newly created CDN resource in the list and click the ‘Details’ button. Scroll to ‘DNS Settings’ and copy & paste the CDN resource address, which will be displayed as follows:

yourhostname.r.worldssl.net

That’s everything you need to do to create your Nublue CDN resource. You should check that the record has propagated out - you can do this by browsing to yourhostname.r.worldssl.net and seeing whether any content is pulled in. This may take some time, but when you’re happy that the resource is working (and not before!) you should then to configure your content management system to use the CDN - please see our Knowledge Base for further guides on how to do this.

Create a resource for a non-HTTPS site

IMPORTANT: This process should only be used if you need to create a CDN resource for a site that does not use HTTPS.

1) Log in to your client billing area.

2) Go to ‘Services > My Services’ and then click ‘View Details’ to the right of your eCommerce CDN package.

3) Scroll down and click the ‘New CDN Resource’ button to start creating a CDN resource.

4) Click the ‘http’ button to create a CDN resource.

5) The following fields need to be completed and steps followed:

- CDN Hostname: pick a hostname for your CDN resource (for example cdn.mydomain.co.uk) and input this.

- Origin(s): specify the domain of your website (for example ‘mydomain.com’).

- SSL Mode: if you need your CDN content (image files, JavaScript and CSS for example) to be served over a https connectiom, then select ‘SSL Mode – With SSL (advanced)’. If you don’t require this, simply leave this field as it is.

6) Now you’ll need to scroll down and tick the Edge Groups you wish to use. These are the continents in which you wish to have your content served at accelerated speeds. Usually you would tick all of these, unless you don’t want your site to perform in, or target, a specific continent.

7) Now click ‘Create CDN Resource’.

8) Find your newly created CDN resource in the list and click the ‘Details’ button. Scroll to ‘DNS Settings’ and copy & paste the CDN CNAME information, which will be displayed as follows:

IN CNAME 123456789.r.worldcdn.net

9) Next you’ll need to head to your DNS settings in your Plesk Control Panel.

10) You’ll need to create a CNAME with the details you noted in step 8. In the ‘Add resource record to the zone’ section, set your record type as ‘CNAME’ from the drop-down menu. Type ‘cdn’ in the ‘domain name’ field, which should be followed by the rest of your domain name outside the field. Finally, paste in your CNAME into the ‘Canonical name’ field and click ‘OK’.

11) Finished! That’s everything you need to do to create your CDN resource. Now you’ll need to configure your content management system to use the Ecommerce CDN. Please see our other guides in the Knowledge Base for guidance on how to do this.