How to Create a Custom CDN URL Subdomain with WP Engine

If you’ve setup a CDN for your WordPress site in WP Engine, you’ve probably noticed that those CDN URLs let anyone viewing the source code of your site know that your site is hosted with WP Engine and that you use NetDNA as your content delivery network. As a general website security rule, protecting any information on how your site is set up is necessary.

To mask the fact that your site is hosted on WP Engine and is using NetDNA as the CDN, we can easily setup a subdomain.

What is a Subdomain?

A subdomain is a domain that is created by combining your main domain name and a domain prefix. Let’s say we wanted to create a domain solely for customer support, which would be directed to a separate area of our website.

As an example, our subdomain would use “support” as the domain prefix and “escapecreative.io” as the main domain. The full subdomain would be “support.escapecreative.io.” A subdomain allows you to easily create a distinctive web address on your site for a specific segment of your business.

Find your CDN URL

You can find your CDN URL by going to a media file on your site, like an image for example.

1. Right click on the image, and choose to either “Open Image in New Tab,” or “View Image Info.”
   • This depends on what browser you’re working in.
2. With the CDN turned on, your image path would look something like http://72189723iuyhaefha928392832f.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/images.jpg.
3. For the next step, copy your CDN URL to your clipboard up to the end of netdna-cdn.com like so, http://72189723iuyhaefha928392832f.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com.

Create a CNAME record

To create a custom CDN URL, you need to setup a CNAME record for cdn.[your domain name].com to point to http://72189723iuyhaefha928392832f.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com. You’ll need to do this in your domain name provider. We use GoDaddy as our preferred domain name provider. Check out our tutorial on how to create a CNAME record in GoDaddy.

Contact WP Engine Customer Support

Once you’ve created a CNAME record for cdn.[your domain name].com, you can contact WP Engine’s customer support staff by creating a support ticket to let them make the required updates on their end for the CDN.

Just let them know that for your website installation, you’d like to use a subdomain for the CDN. They’ll also need to know that you’ve created a CNAME record for cdn.[your domain name].com with your domain name provider, and that it points to http://72189723iuyhaefha928392832f.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com.

WP Engine will finalize the setup of your custom CDN URL subdomain.

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