A content delivery network (CDN) pretty much does what its name says it'll do. It delivers content across a network (of servers), and it is designed to take the burden off your hosting by delivering many different types of content from other servers. The content can be text, images, scripts, media files, software, documents, live streaming and/or on-demand media and even whole social networks.
Essentially, what CDNs allow for is faster-loading pages on your WordPress site, because your media is stored on the CDN and delivered to your visitors from the server that is closest to them.
For example, you live in Oregon, you host with a company out of California, and you use a CDN located in Texas. What your CDN provider does is work with several other networks on the Internet to duplicate and spread your content out all over the world. That way, if your visitor is looking at your site in India, (s)he will be served media from a server closest to where his/her IP shows (s)he is.
Cloudinary , which is located in Israel, has chosen to concentrate its efforts on images and leave all the other types of media to other CDN services, which is Cloudinary 's strength. They don't try to do it all.
Under About on their Facebook page, Cloudinary says the following:
Cloudinary offers a solution to the entire asset management workflow, from upload to transformations, optimizations, storage and delivery.
The key benefits of using Cloudinary are as follows:
It is easy to integrate with whatever web framework you're using, not just WordPress. It can be scaled to almost limitless provisions to include the smallest to largest start-ups and/or applications. It will allow you to change many aspects of your original image, so you can get the size, resolution, overlay, watermark and so much more you want/need for/on your images. It allows your images to be delivered quickly to your visitors, which improves your users' experiences when they come to your site. It reduces cost by offering a generous amount of free storage and bandwidth usage, and it can be administered in many different ways to save you lots of time.
Don't just read about it! Go and sign up for your free account today !
Once you get your own account, and see what Cloudinary has to offer, then you might want to consider telling others about it. Cloudinary has very generous referral terms that will net you extra storage and bandwidth.
See you in the clouds!
via Examiner National Edition Gadgets & Tech Channel Articles http://www.examiner.com/review/images-load-faster-wordpress-with-free-cloudinary-content-delivery-network?cid=roadrunner