Improving Caldera Forms Performance With A Free CDN


All front-end Caldera Forms JavaScript and CSS files can be served from a free, high-performance CDN. All you need to do is change one setting.

This feature was added in Caldera Forms 1.5.3

Why Use The Caldera Forms CDN?

When enabled Caldera Forms JavaScript and CSS is served via the jsDelivr network of CDNs. This services chooses the best CDN to use based on your end-users location. They use MaxCDN, CloudFlare, Fastly or  Quantil to serve the assets.

When you enable the CDN mode, pages on your site with forms should load faster, especially on sites farther from your server and your server’s overall usage will be lowered. Also, it’s free.

Enable CDN Mode

Caldera Forms General Settings ModalIn the main Caldera Forms admin page, click the General Settings button. This brings up a popup. Move the switch next to Enable Free CDN to the on (green) state.

That’s it. It’s on.

Make sure after enabling the CDN mode to test on a variety of browsers with your JavaScript console open. You should not use Caldera Forms CDN mode if you are using a different CDN provider plugin or service.

Usage Data Sharing

One of the reasons we chose jsDelivr is that they are actually serving from multiple CDNs, based on end-user location and real time usage data. That real time usage data is partially gathered by a small tracking script that is inserted into the page footer and has no affect on page load time since it is loaded asynchronously. When you enable the Free CDN mode, a small amount of usage data is shared with jsDelivr.

None of that data is shared with us. We felt like if we were going to integrate with this great free service, the best way to pay it forward was to contribute usage data to improve their service.

For more information, and what is shared read this section of their readme.