Case Study: About.com achieves real-time content control and improved performance with Fastly

About.com - Customer Case Study

About.com, a major online publisher (about 83.6M U.S. and 92.5M international monthly users) with 1,000 experts producing thousands of articles a month, undertook a full redesign and needed a modern, flexible CDN. The team required real‑time control — instant configuration updates, cache purges, traffic‑spike protection and expert support — capabilities legacy providers couldn’t deliver due to slow propagation and limited control.

Fastly provided custom VCL, Instant Purge and sub‑5‑second config changes, enabling real‑time updates (purges in ~150 ms), better performance and SEO, and rapid incident response via knowledgeable support. The result was reduced origin traffic (allowing potential data‑center consolidation and lower CAPEX), a more dynamic reader experience, and a relaunched About.com positioned as a modern, reliable content site.

About.com

Matt Landolf

Director of Operations