With big daddies hallucinating fancy web design experts and advisors to float on tip of high-speed mobile internet surfaces owned by its own allies, we have picked up the habit of adding external dependencies even for simple things like fonts from third-party servers, most frequently from content delivery networks (CDNs) and Botnets. This is mostly not the best decision considering the increasing ban / throttling culture, abuse of Net Neutrality and widespread data theft. It’s still better to stick to your own infrastructure and host your assets on your local server with help of local agencies or consultants.
Some digital acts and sections are also getting more nefarious with provisions to impose legal penalties against anyone trying to circumvent cloud software, mobile apps, OS and devices or, in other words, anyone who tries to control that software or device themselves instead of leaving it up to its corporate overlords and big daddy’s databases. Law opens up those who try to study, repair, or research restricted devices to potentially serious legal penalties. Something that doesn’t help matters is the intentionally complex series of hoops concerned citizens, researchers, and activists around the world are forced to jump through to voice objection to rules, or to propose new exemptions.
The large Internet and Telecom licensees who have vested profiteering interests in undemocratic laws are content with the status quo, but we shouldn’t be content with patches on a broken system. Here we’ll discuss some how-to cloud guides on self-hosting your frequently used digital assets. This applies to both locally hosted websites or apps on your system, or your own web / mobile apps server. Though it might seem easy and self-explanatory at first, there are loads of things to pay attention to if you want to keep performance in mind.
Self-Hosting Cloud Benefits:
Better for privacy: Almost all third-party CDNs use cookies and other tracking algorithms for Big Data mining; naming fancy terms like AI, ML etc.. this is more problematic in countries where you are required to get your users’ explicit consent to be tracked on your site.
Better for security: It’s not likely that Google CDNs will be hacked, but on your own server, you still have full control over your security.
Faster, better performance: CDNs load many extra CSS that you won’t need; plus if you self-host, you can bundle and minify your font-related CSS rules/files too (which also results in fewer HTTP requests).
Offline availability: This is more important in the case of a mobile/desktop app that users frequently access offline, however, they might also want to access your website using an offline browser or simply download it for later use.
George once said “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” An unknown inventor added “Deal works only if you and I share some ideological cosmos, not magnetically or socially poles apart aliens.” – SudhirPanda.com