Improving HTML Time to First Byte

The Time to First Byte (TTFB) is a crucial metric in determining the speed of a website. A slow TTFB can significantly impact other metrics and result in a poor user experience. Various factors contribute to a slow TTFB, including redirects, DNS, connection setup, SSL negotiation, and server response time for HTML. One solution to improve TTFB is edge caching of HTML, which involves pushing the content cache further out to the edge, reducing complexity, eliminating additional time to get back to the origin, and removing hosting performance from the equation. Cloudflare supports caching static HTML, and business and enterprise customers can enable logged-in users to skip the cache by enabling "bypass cache on cookies." Automating this process using HTTP headers for communication between an origin (like a WordPress site) and an edge cache (like Cloudflare's edge nodes) is being explored.