FAQ

  1. What is 2static.it?
  2. What is 2static.it not?
  3. Why is it free? What's the catch?
  4. What about my privacy?
  5. Doesn't this create additional DNS lookup overhead?
  6. Why OpenID?
  7. How do I use my OpenID from ... ?
  8. Help! How do I set up my alias on my site?

  1. What is 2static.it?

    2static.it is a free service designed to help you improve your site's page-load performance. It does this by addressing one specific detractor to page-load performance: cookies in requests for static assets (JS, CSS, images, etc).

    2static.it provides you a free domain (sub-domain of 2static.it) that is an alias of your current site's domain, which you can then use to load your page's static assets, shielding those requests from the browser forwarding cookies unnecessarily for those requests. This makes the request overhead smaller, speeding up the request transmission from browser to server.

    What you get is a DNS entry (sub-domain of 2static.it) that is aliased to your own site's domain. You get to pick what the sub-domain is, as long as it's not already taken.

  2. What is 2static.it not?

    2static.it is not a Content Delivery Network (CDN). 2static.it does not host your files in any way. 2static.it does not load any code, cookies, tracking info, or any other form of information onto your site. 2static.is is not anything other than a DNS alias entry to your domain.

  3. Why is it free? What's the catch?

    Web performance is an ever-growing importance and differentiator between good sites and bad sites. There are a number of various ways to address detractors to web performance, but the one this site addresses (unnecessary cookies in requests for static assets) is an underserved topic. 2static.it is a simple and free solution to this problem. The only goal is to improve page-load performance across the web.

    2static.it is only a simple DNS entry alias to your existing domain. It is not a JavaScript file or any other piece of information that you load onto your site. There's no tracking, HTTP referer, or any other type of information that 2static.it is trying to spy on. There's no catch, we just want to help the web community improve site performance, and giving away some DNS traffic bandwidth is a small price to pay for that.

  4. What about my privacy?

    2static.it does not track the usage of your sub-domain alias in any way other than simple counts. That means if your DNS entry is looked up 14 times, the count record says 14. That's it. There's no HTTP referer, there's no tracking codes or any other type of information tracked. In fact, because of the way the DNS protocol works, 2static.it couldn't track any other information even if we wanted to.

    2static.it simply provides a DNS alias for your domain so that when a user somewhere uses a browser and goes to your site, your 2static.it sub-domain alias will be looked up and used to load the static assets that you chose to link to. You remain completely in control of when and how the alias is used, and 2static.it does not spy on that traffic in anyway other than to track the counts of how many times the DNS entry is accessed.

  5. Doesn't this create additional DNS lookup overhead?

    It's often brought up that various techniques for improving page-load performance can be contradictory. For instance, it's suggested (and reinforced by this site's service) to use different domain names for various content (to shield from unnecessary cookies, increase parallel downloading, etc). But this has the side effect of creating additional DNS lookup overhead, which detracts back from the performance increases. Truly, this is a delicate balancing act of finding the right combination of techniques that gives optimal performance. All of one technique or another will rarely be the best option.

    It's true that using a 2static.it sub-domain alias on your site will create an additional DNS lookup for some users, if there's not already that DNS entry cached and ready for that user's browser to use. However, this lookup should only occur once for a visitor (and be cached for long periods of time usually).

    If you load say a dozen different static assets on each page view, the first of those may be slightly slower, but you'll quickly make up the difference when all subsequent requests are smaller because of the cookie shielding. The more assets you load, and the more times those assets are requested across multiple page views, the more your site's performance savings will add up for the user.

    Overall, this performance benefit should have a positive impact on your site's page-load performance. One DNS lookup is a small price to pay for thousands of bytes less of request overhead across all your site's static assets.

  6. Why OpenID?

    OpenID is free, secure, and easy to use. It also helps improve your browsing experience by reducing the number of different accounts/passwords you must maintain. Read more about OpenID and its benefits to understand why 2static.it uses it for login/registration.

  7. How do I use my OpenID from ... ?

    There are a lot of different OpenID providers, and some of them have different/non-standard ways of representing your OpenID URL. While this list is definitely not comprehensive or authoritative, these are some of the major OpenID Providers you probably are familiar with (consult yours specifically for more information):

    • MyOpenId    http://username.myopenid.com
    • Wordpress    http://username.wordpress.com  (must already be logged in)
    • AOL/AIM    http://openid.aol.com/username
    • Flickr    http://www.flickr.com/photos/username
    • LiveJournal    http://username.livejournal.com
    • Google    http://www.google.com/profiles/username --OR--
      https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id  (must already be logged in)
    • Yahoo    http://yahoo.com  (must already be logged in)
    • MySpace    http://myspace.com

    Use the URL's exactly as listed (substituting in your username if so listed). Note, some of the URL's are fixed and do not include your username. They will auto-detect who you are based on your current login, so you just use the fixed URL as listed and proceed.

  8. Help! How do I set up my alias on my site?

    Setting up your hosting server to accept incoming requests for files via your new 2static.it alias can be a little bit challenging, depending on your hosting environment/provider and your knowledge of hosting technology. In general, you just need to create a "Server Alias" type record for your existing site, which usually amounts to nothing more than a single entry in a configuration file in the hosting environment. Unfortunately, this type of functionality is referred to in a variety of different ways, which leads to the confusion.

    If you are still struggling with how to get this set up on your site/hosting, check out this Server Alias guide for tips and suggestions.