We now supports HTTP/2, the latest version of HTTP, which can reduce web page latency and improve SEO. HTTP/2 accelerates the transmission of data over HTTP, including encrypted traffic over SSL/TLS.

What is HTTP/2?

HTTP/2 (originally named HTTP/2.0) is a major revision of the HTTP network protocol used by the World Wide Web. It was developed from the earlier experimental SPDY protocol, originally developed by Google. HTTP/2 was developed by the Hypertext Transfer Protocol working group (httpbis, where bis means “second”) of the Internet Engineering Task Force.HTTP/2 is the first new version of HTTP since HTTP 1.1, which was standardized in RFC 2068 in 1997. The Working Group presented HTTP/2 to IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard in December 2014, and IESG approved it to publish as Proposed Standard on February 17, 2015. The HTTP/2 specification was published as RFC 7540 in May 2015.

The standardization effort was supported by Chrome, Opera, Firefox, Internet Explorer 11, Safari, Amazon Silk and Edge browsers. Most major browsers added HTTP/2 support by the end of 2015.

According to W3Techs, as of June 2016, 8.4% of the top 10 million websites supported HTTP/2. According to research by isthewebhttp2yet.com, as of May 2016, CloudFlare provides HTTP/2 across more domains than any other network provider.

What is the benefit to you?

HTTP/2 eliminates the need for you to choose between site performance, security, or SEO. With HTTP 1.1, sites using SSL often took longer to load due to latency while establishing a secure connection. With HTTP/2, you can use SSL certificates without compromising the experience for your site visitors. Additionally, Google considers speed a page ranking factor, and GoogleBot will soon support HTTP/2, which means websites on HTTP/2 may get a rankings boost because of the additional speed. It’s a win-win-win.

HTTP/2 allows the server to “push” content, that is, to respond with data for more queries than the client requested. This allows the server to supply data it knows a web browser will need to render a web page, without waiting for the browser to examine the first response, and without the overhead of an additional request cycle.

HTTP/2 support is one more step toward achieving the fastest WordPress experience on the web.