Loading CSS and JS files from another domain and serving resources from consistent URL

Question

I have a website that is grown somewhat large and is built on a super-restrictive platform (SBI). There you have to follow their file structure and put everything in an appropriate folder and then upload each and every file through their interface manually. I have cool HTML5 template and some Javascript with a lot of little files and images so it was just way easier to upload all this stuff to my OTHER DOMAIN hosted by Hostgator using Filezilla and then just refer css and js files from my SBI site to their location at my Hostgator's domain.

Are there any potential issues with this method?

The reason I am asking is because yesterday I came across Google's article on serving resourcing from a consistent URL: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/best-practices/payload#duplicate_resources However, I might be misunderstanding what it means. When I put my actual URL to test at Google's page speed insights here https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights it advises me to serve resources from a consistent URL, but in details it doesn't complain about my CSS and JS files, it complains about Facebook only, like this:

Suggestions for this page: The following resources have identical contents, but are served from different URLs. Serve these resources from a consistent URL to save 1 request(s) and24.3KiB. http:// static.ak.facebook.com/.../xd_arbiter.php?... https:// s-static.ak.facebook.com/.../xd_arbiter.php?...

I appreciate you reading this. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Serving static content from a different domain is common practice, I don't see any issues there - it's as safe and reliable as the server you are using to serve it.

The facebook warning could mean you are loading the same FB API script twice, or it just may be some black magic done by the FB devs.

Answer 2

You should not have any problems with hosting your files on a different site. Your users may experience a slightly slower page load because their machine has to do more DNS lookups, on the other hand most web browsers only download a maximum of 2 files form a host simultaneously, so doubling your hosts can double your simultaneous downloads. That warning about Facebook is because the same script is being downloaded twice from two different places which is not ideal, but I'm not familiar with the Facebook api so I'm not sure if that can be helped.