What is SteadyOffload?

SteadyOffload is a content delivery service. Here’s how the service describes itself:

SteadyOffload is an innovative service designed to reduce the load of your web server seamlessly. It enables you to offload all kinds of static web content – images, documents, movies, presentations, software downloads, you name it. The content you offload remains stored on your server while synchronized copies are delivered from us. It all happens transparently – all you have to do is point the files to offload, the rest is done by our cachebot.

So, what’s all that about then. Well, in all honesty if you visit the SteadyOffload site they do a good job of explaining what they are all about. In a nutshell they save your server from excessive work by serving up static files held on the SteadyOffload servers. It works much in the way that Amazon S3 does but with hardly any hassle at all. You simply upload your static image, document or whatever file and it gets mirrored and then subsequently served by the SteadyOffload server. All your own server need do is then serve up the dynamic content at a fraction of the server load.

So How Does it Work?

In order for the SteadyOffload integration to start working you obviously need to sign up for an account. New signups get 5GB of bandwidth free. Once that’s expired it works on a pay as you go basis but the fees are very competitive compared to other more well known delivery services. Once you have your account up and running you simply have to put a small piece of HTML code in pages that show static content. Here’s the code:


script type="text/javascript" src="http://steadyoffload.com/serve/name of script.js">/script


Then, by using custom tags, your static content is offloaded to SteadyOffload and your server can take a breather. Here’s an example custom tag:


img srcx="/home/www/site/example.jpg" /


Note the custom scrx tag

There’s also a funky plugin for WordPress Users that takes care of all the business for you. Grab it from here: WP-Offload.

An obvious benefit of SteadyOffload is that whilst the files are served remotely, if you cancel your account, your original files are still in place and ready to be served once again by your server, which probably won’t thank you too much for all the work you’re giving it back.

Control Panel

When you have your SteadyOffload setup running sweetly, you can monitor what’s being offloaded by visiting the Control Panel. Here you can set URL Filters to ensure no-one is stealing your bandwidth, monitor offloaded files and keep tabs on your subscription.

Added 28/5/09

I found a really useful Video at Google produced by SteadyOffload themselves that shows how simple it is to use the Control Panel. It also shows something that I neglected to mention and that’s dynamic image manipulation by using the “xmanip” tag. The video is here.

And so…

I think SteadyOffload is a great service that deserves support and can provide obvious performance benefits for your site. It’s simple to set up, free to trial and cheap once you use up your free bandwidth. Once I start paying (and yes, I haven’t used up my freebies yet) then I’ll make an effort to produce some stats and figures to show just how cheapo it really is.

Give it a go!

NB. Nearly forgot, I recently Tweeted on Twitter about SteadyOffload since I stupidly misplaced my password. As far as I can tell I was the first person to tweet about it. Ever. Unreal! My Original Tweet