HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol and is the Internet protocol used to fetch website content from the hosting server and display it in your web browser.  When you type a URL into your browser, you are in essence creating an HTTP request to the web hosting server, instructing it to find and display the web page on your computer screen.  Basically, you wouldn’t be able to browse a website without it!

HTTP is an old protocol that was first developed in 1989 and officially released in 1997.  Its purpose was to request site content from the hosting server and it does so one element at a time.  Back in the 90’s, websites were very different from what we’re accustomed to today.  They were mainly text-based with very little in the way of scripts and media.  As a result, HTTP did a perfectly fine job of loading sites from this era.

Fast forward 20 years and websites are nothing like they were way back when.  Photographers have hundreds of high resolution pictures to browse through, bloggers and online stores are all using images, videos and live streams to drive traffic to their sites and, as a result, HTTP is no longer suitably equipped to transfer such content rich websites.  In today’s age of instant delivery, having to wait for a site to load could cost you customers that don’t have the time or patience to stick around.

Enter HTTP/2 and its vast array of improvements over its sibling.  HTTP/2 was designed for the modern resource intensive web.  Instead of fetching one element at a time, as with HTTP, HTTP/2 is able to request multiple elements simultaneously which means that even complex, content-rich websites load several times faster!  HTTP/2 also remains backwards compatible with HTTP, ensuring that browsers that employ HTTP/2 can fully take advantage of the benefits, while browsers that don’t, can still operate without affecting the user experience.  Most major browsers added HTTP/2 support by the end of 2015.  According to W3Techs, as of December 2016, 10.8% of the top 10 million websites supported HTTP/2.

Do you feel suitably convinced that HTTP/2 is the right way forward?  If so, you will need to find yourself a cutting edge hosting company that has taken the time to implement and offer HTTP/2 support to their customers.  We at Mshini are pleased to report that all customers benefit from a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate and every customer with an SSL certificate automatically has HTTP/2 enabled on their site!

Hello HTTP/2!  Hello speed!  Have any questions?  Please get in touch with us!  We’d love to chat!