# Improving the Performance and Security of Your Site Effectively
Website performance and security have become non-negotiable pillars of successful digital presence in today’s hyper-competitive online landscape. Studies consistently demonstrate that a one-second delay in page load time can result in a 7% reduction in conversions, whilst security breaches can cost businesses millions in damages and irreparable reputational harm. The intersection of speed and security no longer represents a trade-off but rather a unified objective that demands sophisticated technical implementation and continuous monitoring.
Modern web infrastructure presents both unprecedented opportunities and complex challenges for site owners. With users expecting sub-two-second load times and near-impenetrable security measures, the technical bar has never been higher. Search engines like Google have fundamentally altered their ranking algorithms to prioritise sites that deliver exceptional user experiences through fast loading speeds, robust security protocols, and accessibility compliance. This shift means that technical excellence directly translates to competitive advantage, increased visibility, and improved business outcomes.
The technical landscape has evolved dramatically over recent years. What once required extensive manual configuration can now be automated through intelligent tooling and modern development workflows. However, this accessibility doesn’t diminish the importance of understanding the underlying principles. Effective optimisation requires a holistic approach that considers every layer of your technology stack, from database queries to edge caching strategies, from TLS configuration to content delivery mechanisms.
Core web vitals optimisation: LCP, FID, and CLS metrics
Google’s Core Web Vitals represent a fundamental shift in how search engines evaluate user experience. These metrics—Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)—provide quantifiable measurements of loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability. Understanding and optimising these metrics directly impacts both search rankings and user satisfaction, making them essential priorities for any serious performance optimisation initiative.
LCP measures the time from when a page starts loading to when the largest content element becomes visible in the viewport. Google considers an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less as good, with anything above 4 seconds being poor. This metric captures the user’s perceived loading experience more accurately than traditional load time measurements because it focuses on what matters most: when the main content actually appears. Sites with excellent LCP scores typically see higher engagement rates and lower bounce rates, demonstrating the direct correlation between technical performance and business outcomes.
Largest contentful paint enhancement through image compression and WebP format
Images frequently constitute the LCP element, particularly on content-rich pages and e-commerce sites. Optimising image delivery represents one of the highest-impact interventions you can implement. The WebP format, developed by Google, provides superior compression compared to JPEG and PNG whilst maintaining visual quality. Conversion to WebP can reduce file sizes by 25-35% without perceptible quality loss, directly translating to faster LCP times. Modern browsers support WebP extensively, with fallback mechanisms available for older browsers through the picture element.
Beyond format selection, responsive image sizing ensures that users download appropriately sized assets for their viewport dimensions. Serving a 4000-pixel-wide image to a mobile device with a 375-pixel screen represents wasted bandwidth and delayed rendering. The srcset attribute enables browsers to select optimal image resolutions based on device characteristics, whilst lazy loading defers off-screen image loading until needed. However, never lazy-load your LCP image, as this introduces unnecessary delay in its discovery and rendering.
First input delay reduction via JavaScript execution optimisation
First Input Delay measures the time from when a user first interacts with your page to when the browser can actually respond to that interaction. This metric captures the frustrating experience of clicking a button only to have nothing happen because the main thread remains blocked by JavaScript execution. Modern JavaScript frameworks, whilst powerful, can generate significant execution overhead that directly impacts FID scores. Code splitting, tree shaking, and strategic use of dynamic imports help minimise the JavaScript payload and reduce parse/compile times.
Third-party scripts represent a particularly insidious performance threat. Analytics tools, advertising platforms, and social media widgets frequently inject substantial JavaScript that blocks the main thread. Auditing and optimising third-party script loading through techniques like script deferral, async loading, and facade patterns can dramatically improve FID measurements. Some organisations
continued, however, have started adopting stricter governance around which third-party tags are allowed and enforcing performance budgets for every script loaded. You can adopt a similar approach by regularly profiling your JavaScript with browser DevTools, identifying long tasks (those exceeding 50 ms), and breaking them into smaller, asynchronous chunks using requestIdleCallback or web workers. By reducing main-thread blocking time, you not only improve First Input Delay but also create a noticeably smoother, more responsive user experience.
Cumulative layout shift mitigation using CSS aspect ratio boxes
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures how much content unexpectedly moves around while the page is loading. These visual jumps are not just annoying; they also directly affect your Core Web Vitals score and, by extension, your search rankings. A typical culprit behind poor CLS is content that loads without predefined dimensions—images, ads, iframes, and dynamically injected blocks that push other elements down as they appear. When you reserve explicit space for these components, you dramatically reduce layout instability and improve the perceived quality of your site.
One of the most effective ways to stabilise layouts is by using CSS aspect ratio boxes. The modern aspect-ratio property allows you to declare the intrinsic width-to-height ratio of an element, enabling the browser to allocate the correct space before the asset is fully loaded. For example, setting img { aspect-ratio: 16 / 9; } ensures that a video thumbnail keeps its shape without shifting neighbouring content. For older browsers, you can emulate the same behaviour with the classic padding-top hack, where a container uses percentage padding to enforce the desired ratio. By systematically applying aspect ratios to all media and third-party embeds, you can all but eliminate surprising shifts that frustrate users.
CLS optimisation also extends beyond pure layout constraints. Late-loading fonts, for instance, can cause subtle but measurable shifts when text reflows after the font file becomes available. Using font-display: swap or optional helps ensure text remains visible and stable, even if the custom font has not yet downloaded. Furthermore, avoid injecting banners, consent prompts, or sticky bars above already-rendered content whenever possible; instead, allocate their space in advance or attach them to the bottom of the viewport. Think of your page like a carefully laid-out newspaper: once the columns are printed, you would not expect the headlines to jump mid-reading.
Chrome user experience report data analysis for performance benchmarking
While synthetic tests are invaluable for debugging, real-world performance data ultimately determines how users experience your site. This is where the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) becomes a powerful ally. CrUX aggregates anonymised performance data from actual Chrome users, providing field metrics for LCP, FID (and its successor, INP), and CLS across different devices and connection types. Instead of guessing how your site behaves on a congested 4G network or a low-end Android device, you gain statistically significant insights grounded in real traffic patterns.
You can access CrUX data in several ways: via Google Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report, the PageSpeed Insights API, or directly through BigQuery for advanced analysis. By segmenting this data by URL, country, or device category, you can identify which sections of your site underperform and where to focus your optimisation efforts. For example, you might discover that product detail pages have excellent LCP but poor CLS due to loading patterns of recommendation widgets, while your blog performs well across all metrics. Armed with this information, you can prioritise engineering work where it has the greatest business impact.
Think of CrUX as the equivalent of an observatory for your web performance: instead of looking at a single star through a telescope, you see the entire constellation of user experiences. Combining CrUX with continuous monitoring tools and synthetic testing gives you a full performance picture. You can establish realistic performance budgets (for instance, “95% of mobile visits must have LCP under 2.5 seconds”) and track progress over time. When you roll out major changes—new frameworks, design overhauls, or third-party integrations—you can compare before-and-after CrUX data to confirm whether your optimisation strategy truly improved performance or introduced unintended regressions.
Content delivery network implementation: cloudflare and fastly configuration
Once you’ve optimised your Core Web Vitals at the application layer, the next major lever is how your content is delivered across the globe. A well-configured Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Cloudflare or Fastly can reduce latency, absorb traffic spikes, and provide an additional security layer against DDoS attacks. Instead of routing every request back to your origin server, CDNs cache assets at edge locations close to your users. The result is similar to storing frequently used tools in a nearby drawer instead of a warehouse across town: access becomes dramatically faster and more reliable.
However, simply enabling a CDN is not enough to unlock its full performance and security potential. You need to implement intelligent caching rules, edge logic, and cache invalidation strategies tailored to your application’s behaviour. Dynamic content, personalised pages, and authenticated areas often require more nuanced handling than static assets like images or stylesheets. By combining standard caching headers with platform-specific features such as Cloudflare Workers or Fastly VCL, you can strike a fine balance between freshness and speed, ensuring users always receive accurate content with minimal round trips to your origin.
Edge caching strategies with cloudflare workers for dynamic content
Traditional CDNs shine at caching static files, but many modern applications rely heavily on dynamic, personalised content that changes frequently. Cloudflare Workers bridge this gap by allowing you to execute lightweight JavaScript at the edge, intercepting and modifying requests and responses before they reach your origin. This makes it possible to cache portions of dynamic responses, implement custom routing logic, or even generate simple API responses entirely at the edge. Think of Workers as programmable gateways that can take decisions in milliseconds, reducing the load on your backend and improving response times worldwide.
A common pattern is to use edge caching for semi-dynamic content where full personalisation is not required. For instance, you might cache HTML for anonymous users while bypassing the cache for authenticated sessions. With Workers, you can inspect cookies, headers, or query strings and decide whether to serve a cached response or forward the request upstream. You can also implement edge-side includes (ESI)-like behaviour, where the majority of the page is cached but small fragments are fetched dynamically. This hybrid approach can drastically lower Time to First Byte (TTFB) and improve overall site performance without sacrificing correctness.
When designing edge caching strategies, pay particular attention to cache keys and Cache-Control semantics. Overly broad keys may cause users in different regions or devices to share responses that shouldn’t be shared; too granular keys can lead to cache fragmentation and lower hit ratios. Cloudflare Workers let you construct custom cache keys based on only the headers that truly matter—such as language or device type—while ignoring volatile attributes. As always, thorough testing is essential: deploy Workers in staging first, monitor hit rates and error logs, and gradually roll out to production to ensure they behave as expected under real traffic.
Fastly VCL customisation for advanced cache control headers
Fastly takes a different but equally powerful approach by exposing its configuration through Varnish Configuration Language (VCL). VCL offers granular control over how requests and responses are handled, including which objects are cached, how long they remain valid, and under which conditions they are purged. While the learning curve is steeper than a point-and-click dashboard, the payoff is a highly tailored caching layer that can align perfectly with your application’s logic. In many high-traffic environments, Fastly’s VCL-driven edge has become a central piece of the performance and security architecture.
With VCL, you can define separate behaviour for distinct request phases—vcl_recv, vcl_hash, vcl_backend_response, and more. For example, you might strip cookies for certain paths to make responses more cacheable, or normalise query parameters to prevent unnecessary cache misses. You can also add or override cache control headers before responses are cached, ensuring that stale content is not served longer than intended. In effect, VCL allows you to correct or enhance upstream behaviour without modifying your application code, which can be invaluable when working with third-party platforms or legacy systems.
Advanced Fastly configurations often combine performance and security concerns. You can implement rate limiting, IP-based access controls, or geo-based routing directly at the edge, reducing the attack surface of your origin servers. As with any powerful tool, governance is crucial: keep your VCL snippets version-controlled, document each rule’s intent, and test changes in a staging environment before promoting them. When used thoughtfully, Fastly VCL becomes not just a cache configuration language but a strategic lever for shaping how users interact with your site worldwide.
Multi-cdn failover architecture using DNS load balancing
Reliance on a single CDN provider creates a potential single point of failure, especially for mission-critical digital properties. Outages, routing issues, or regional disruptions at one provider can translate into downtime or degraded performance for your users. To mitigate this risk, many organisations adopt a multi-CDN architecture, distributing traffic across two or more providers such as Cloudflare and Fastly. In this model, DNS-based load balancing acts as the traffic director, steering users to the healthiest and closest edge network available at any given time.
Implementing a robust multi-CDN setup involves more than pointing a round-robin DNS entry to multiple endpoints. You need health checks to detect when a provider is experiencing issues, failover rules to shift traffic accordingly, and consistent configuration across CDNs to avoid surprises. DNS services like NS1, Route 53, or Azure DNS offer sophisticated traffic steering policies based on latency, geography, and availability. For example, you might route European traffic primarily through Fastly while directing Asian traffic through Cloudflare, with automatic failover to the other CDN if health checks start failing.
Of course, multi-CDN architectures introduce operational complexity: cache invalidation must be coordinated across providers, logging and analytics become more fragmented, and debugging issues may require cross-vendor collaboration. To manage this, establish clear observability practices from the outset. Standardise response headers, collect logs in a central platform, and document which CDN controls which parts of the traffic. When done right, multi-CDN gives you the redundancy of multiple power grids feeding your city: if one network flickers, the others keep the lights on without users even noticing.
Real-time purging and cache invalidation workflows
Fast caching is only valuable if you can safely keep content fresh. Nothing erodes user trust faster than seeing outdated or inconsistent information—stale prices, expired promotions, or removed articles still appearing in search. Real-time cache purging and invalidation workflows are therefore essential components of any serious CDN strategy. Both Cloudflare and Fastly provide APIs and dashboards to purge individual URLs, cache tags, or entire zones, allowing you to align cache lifetimes closely with your content publishing cadence.
A best practice is to move away from manual purges triggered by human operators and towards automated, event-driven workflows. For instance, when a product is updated in your CMS or inventory system, a webhook can notify a build pipeline or serverless function, which then issues targeted purge requests to all CDNs in your stack. Tag-based purging (sometimes called surrogate keys) is especially powerful: by assigning logical tags like product:1234 or category:shoes to cached responses, you can invalidate entire groups of pages with a single API call. This ensures consistency while avoiding the nuclear option of purging everything and causing a temporary performance cliff.
Designing these workflows is a bit like planning air traffic control: you want precise control over which planes land and take off, without grounding the entire fleet. Establish standard operating procedures for emergency purges, routine content updates, and scheduled maintenance. Monitor purge latency—how long it takes for an invalidation request to propagate across all edge nodes—and bake that into your business processes. With well-tuned invalidation in place, you can confidently set longer cache lifetimes, maximising performance benefits while still guaranteeing content accuracy.
Transport layer security hardening: TLS 1.3 and certificate management
Performance optimisation is meaningless if users cannot trust the connection to your site. Transport Layer Security (TLS) not only encrypts data in transit but also plays a surprisingly direct role in perceived speed. Older protocols and poorly configured cipher suites can introduce additional handshake latency, especially on mobile networks. Modernising your TLS stack—adopting TLS 1.3, automating certificate management, and enforcing strict transport security—enhances both security posture and performance. In essence, you are reinforcing the locks on your doors while also installing smoother hinges.
Most major browsers and operating systems now support TLS 1.3, which streamlines the handshake process and enables features like 0-RTT resumption in some scenarios. Combined with HTTP/2 or HTTP/3, this results in fewer round trips before content begins to flow, particularly beneficial for users on high-latency connections. At the same time, proper certificate lifecycle management prevents embarrassing and disruptive outages due to expired certificates. By treating TLS configuration as code—versioned, automated, and continuously validated—you reduce the risk of human error while keeping your security controls aligned with evolving best practices.
Let’s encrypt wildcard certificates with ACME protocol automation
Manually issuing and renewing TLS certificates is both error-prone and unnecessary in modern environments. Let’s Encrypt, via the ACME (Automatic Certificate Management Environment) protocol, has fundamentally changed how organisations approach certificate management. You can now obtain domain-validated certificates for free and renew them automatically every 60–90 days, eliminating the classic scenario where a forgotten certificate brings down production at midnight. For sites with many subdomains—or those using multi-tenant architectures—wildcard certificates simplify management even further.
To issue a Let’s Encrypt wildcard certificate, you typically use the ACME DNS-01 challenge, proving control over the domain by adding specific DNS records. Tools like Certbot, acme.sh, or built-in integrations from hosting providers can handle this process end-to-end. Once configured, renewals occur automatically, with updated certificates deployed to your web servers, load balancers, or CDNs without manual intervention. You should still implement monitoring and alerting around certificate expiry dates, but automation dramatically reduces operational overhead and the chance of outages.
When integrating wildcard certificates into complex infrastructures—such as Kubernetes clusters or multi-region deployments—treat certificates as part of your configuration management. Store ACME client configurations in version control, restrict access to private keys, and integrate certificate deployment with your CI/CD pipeline. This way, adding a new subdomain becomes as routine as merging a pull request. The result is a secure, encrypted website where users never encounter alarming browser warnings about invalid or expired certificates.
HSTS preloading and certificate transparency monitoring
HTTPS adoption is now table stakes, but you can go further by enforcing strict HTTPS usage with HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). HSTS instructs browsers to always connect to your domain over HTTPS, even if the user types http:// or clicks an outdated link. When combined with HSTS preloading—registering your domain in major browsers’ built-in preload lists—you effectively eliminate the possibility of insecure HTTP connections. This closes the door on certain downgrade and man-in-the-middle attacks that exploit initial HTTP requests.
Enabling HSTS preloading requires careful preparation, because misconfiguration can lock you into HTTPS in ways that are difficult to reverse. Start with a modest max-age and the includeSubDomains and preload directives only once you are confident that all subdomains support HTTPS correctly. After submission to the HSTS preload list, browsers will treat your site as HTTPS-only, even before the first network request. From a user perspective, this creates a more secure and often faster initial connection path.
In parallel, Certificate Transparency (CT) logs provide visibility into all publicly issued certificates for your domains, helping detect mis-issuance or malicious activity. Monitoring CT logs with tools or services that alert you to unexpected certificates is akin to checking who has made copies of your house keys. If you see a certificate you did not request, you can work with the issuing Certificate Authority to revoke it and investigate further. Together, HSTS and CT monitoring form a robust defensive layer that complements your baseline TLS configuration.
TLS cipher suite configuration for forward secrecy
Beyond choosing the right protocol version, the selection of TLS cipher suites significantly influences both security and performance. Modern best practice is to prioritise cipher suites that support forward secrecy, ensuring that even if a server’s private key is compromised in the future, past encrypted sessions cannot be decrypted. Forward secrecy is achieved through ephemeral key exchanges like ECDHE (Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman Ephemeral), which generate unique session keys for each connection. Without it, an attacker who records encrypted traffic today could potentially decrypt it later by obtaining your private key.
Configuring cipher suites can feel like navigating a minefield of acronyms and compatibility concerns, but most web servers and CDNs provide sensible, secure defaults that you can refine. Aim to disable outdated and vulnerable suites such as those using RC4, 3DES, or plain Diffie-Hellman with small key sizes. Prefer AES-GCM or ChaCha20-Poly1305 for authenticated encryption, balancing performance across different hardware profiles. You can validate your configuration using tools like SSL Labs’ SSL Server Test, which grades your setup and highlights weak or unnecessary suites.
From a performance standpoint, modern cipher suites are highly optimised and often hardware-accelerated, so the overhead of strong encryption is minimal compared to the gains in security. Think of cipher configuration like setting the combination on a safe: choosing a modern, complex code does not slow you down significantly, but it makes unauthorised access orders of magnitude harder. By regularly reviewing your TLS settings and aligning them with current industry recommendations, you ensure your site remains secure against evolving cryptographic attacks without sacrificing speed.
OCSP stapling implementation to reduce handshake latency
Every TLS connection involves not only verifying the server certificate but also checking whether that certificate has been revoked. Traditionally, browsers perform Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) lookups directly against the Certificate Authority’s servers, introducing extra network round trips and potential privacy concerns. OCSP stapling optimises this process by allowing your server to fetch and cache the OCSP response, then “staple” it to the TLS handshake. The browser can validate the revocation status immediately, without additional outbound requests.
Enabling OCSP stapling is straightforward on most modern web servers and CDNs; it typically involves toggling a setting and ensuring that intermediate certificates are correctly configured. Once active, you reduce handshake latency, particularly beneficial on high-latency connections where each extra lookup is noticeable. From the user’s perspective, the site simply feels snappier, even though the change occurs deep in the transport layer. It is a small but meaningful optimisation that aligns performance and security objectives.
In multi-CDN or load-balanced environments, ensure that all edge nodes support OCSP stapling consistently. Monitor OCSP response freshness and watch for misconfigurations that could cause some clients to treat your certificate as unverifiable. Combined with TLS 1.3, forward-secret cipher suites, and solid certificate management practices, OCSP stapling helps complete a modern, high-performance HTTPS stack that instils confidence in your users.
Web application firewall rules: ModSecurity and OWASP core rule set
Even with strong TLS and hardened infrastructure, application-level vulnerabilities remain a prime target for attackers. A Web Application Firewall (WAF) acts as a protective shield in front of your site, inspecting incoming requests and blocking malicious patterns before they reach your application servers. ModSecurity, when paired with the OWASP Core Rule Set (CRS), provides a widely adopted open-source WAF solution that can detect common threats like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and path traversal. Think of it as a vigilant security guard reviewing every request at the door.
Out of the box, the OWASP CRS offers a comprehensive set of generic protections, but tailoring is crucial to minimise false positives while maintaining strong coverage. Start in a detection-only mode, logging but not blocking suspicious traffic, and analyse the results over a representative period. Which rules fire most often? Are legitimate user actions being flagged? Gradually refine rule thresholds, disable irrelevant checks, and create custom exceptions for known safe patterns in your application. Once you are confident in the configuration, switch to blocking mode and monitor alerts closely.
Performance-wise, a well-tuned WAF should introduce minimal overhead compared to the benefits of filtering out malicious traffic. To keep latency low, deploy ModSecurity as close to your application as possible—within your web server, reverse proxy, or even at the CDN edge where supported. Regularly update the OWASP CRS to incorporate the latest attack signatures and evolving best practices. By combining WAF rules with secure coding, regular patching, and robust authentication mechanisms, you create a multi-layered defence that significantly raises the bar for would-be attackers.
Database query optimisation: MySQL query cache and redis integration
Under the surface of every performant website lies a well-tuned data layer. Inefficient database queries and chatty back-and-forths between your application and database can quietly undermine all your front-end optimisations. While modern versions of MySQL have deprecated the traditional query cache due to scalability concerns, the broader concept—avoiding repeated expensive queries—is still vital. Today, you can achieve this more reliably with application-level caching and in-memory data stores such as Redis, dramatically reducing response times for frequently requested data.
A practical starting point is to profile your database workload using tools like EXPLAIN, slow query logs, and performance dashboards. Identify queries with high execution time or those called thousands of times per minute. Often, simple changes—adding appropriate indexes, denormalising highly accessed data, or rewriting overly complex joins—yield significant gains. Once the underlying queries are efficient, you can layer caching on top to minimise how often they run at all. This two-step approach prevents you from masking structural issues behind a cache that may later become a bottleneck itself.
Redis excels as a low-latency cache for hot data: user sessions, product catalogues, configuration flags, or rendered HTML fragments. By storing computed results with sensible time-to-live (TTL) values, you offload repetitive work from your database and application. Cache keys should be predictable and scoped—for example, product:1234 or user:42:preferences—so they can be invalidated precisely when underlying data changes. In many real-world systems, moving even 20–30% of read traffic to Redis can cut average response times in half and greatly improve throughput.
Care must be taken to handle cache invalidation correctly, especially in distributed environments. Adopting patterns like cache-aside, where the application reads from the cache first and falls back to the database on a miss, can keep logic simple and predictable. Monitor cache hit ratios and latency as first-class metrics; if hits are low, investigate whether keys are being generated consistently and whether TTLs are too aggressive. By treating your database and cache as complementary parts of a unified data strategy, you ensure that performance gains are both substantial and sustainable.
HTTP/2 server push and brotli compression implementation
The final layer in your performance and security stack involves how assets are transported over the wire. HTTP/2 and Brotli compression represent two powerful tools for reducing load times and bandwidth usage without compromising quality. HTTP/2 introduces multiplexing, header compression, and prioritisation, allowing multiple resources to be delivered concurrently over a single connection. Brotli, meanwhile, typically achieves 15–25% better compression than Gzip for text-based assets like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Together, they help ensure that your optimised content reaches users as quickly and efficiently as possible.
HTTP/2 server push—now deprecated in HTTP/3 and increasingly discouraged—was originally designed to let servers proactively send critical resources before the browser requested them. In practice, however, it proved challenging to manage and easy to misuse, often resulting in wasted bandwidth. If you already use server push, audit which resources are being pushed and confirm via browser DevTools that they are not redundantly downloaded. In many cases, carefully tuned preload hints achieve similar benefits with less complexity, giving the browser final say over what should be fetched when.
Enabling Brotli compression is usually as simple as toggling a configuration option on your web server or CDN. Prioritise Brotli for clients that support it while falling back to Gzip for older browsers. Pay particular attention to compressible content types: HTML, JSON, CSS, and JavaScript benefit the most, while already-compressed assets like images and videos should generally be excluded. Compression is analogous to vacuum-packing your files before shipping them: the payload becomes smaller, transit times shorten, and delivery costs drop, all while the contents remain intact.
As with any optimisation, continuous measurement is essential. Use real user monitoring and synthetic tests to verify that HTTP/2 and Brotli are delivering their expected advantages across different regions and networks. Keep an eye on CPU usage on your origin servers when enabling higher compression levels; in most cases the trade-off is favourable, but extreme settings can increase processing overhead. By thoughtfully combining modern transport protocols with the performance and security strategies outlined above, you create a site that is not only fast and resilient but also trustworthy—a foundation that supports sustainable growth in an increasingly demanding digital world.