We’re very excited to announce that Shifter Media CDN, has officially left beta and is now generally available for all Shifter Static users on paid subscription tiers. 

Although Shifter is already based on a CDN-first approach, meaning that a CDN is built into every Shfiter site, this feature is a bit different. This is because the Shifter Media CDN was specifically designed to offload your media files out of WordPress making your site more lightweight and managable for static site generating and is completely separate from your included CDN.

It just so happens that serving media assets over a dedicated CDN offers some added benefits. It works by offloading static assets from your WordPress library to object storage. Doing this allows you to upload larger media files while also dramatically reducing the size of your WordPress site. Having a smaller site means that you’ll be able to generate static sites more quickly and reliably.. We’ve also integrated our Media CDN directly with WordPress, meaning that set up is quick and your WordPress dashboard will be more performant. 

To turn on the media CDN, all you need to do is navigate to the “setting” tab of the site for which you would like to use the Media CDN, scroll down to the Media CDN section, and click to enable it. 

Once enabled, the files from your WordPress /uploads will begin uploading to the Media CDN. This process can take a few moments, so be sure to leave your WordPress and Shifter dashboards open and keep an eye on your WordPress media library until you see all thumbnails appear. 

There are a few precautions to take before using the Shifter media CDN, so please be sure to check out our official support document to make sure that it’s a right fit for your project. 

As always, if you have any questions about Shifter Media CDN or any other feedback, we’d love to hear from you. 

Thanks for using Shifter!