Can Craft or any of its plugins render down flat html files for speed Having spoken to our 'ops guy' I've come to understand that if Craft CMS can render flat html or cache some of the pages then it makes thing a lot quicker to load etc.

Is this something craft can do? Also will it will be ok using assets from a cloud front CDN setup too?
I've come to understand that if Craft CMS can render flat html or cache some of the pages then it makes thing a lot quicker to load


I believe you're looking for the the {% cache %} tag, which will – on the first page request – capture the compiled HTML output inbetween the opening and closing of the tag, and write it to the database. On subsequent requests, Craft will pull and output the compiled (flat) HTML using a single SQL query (until the cache expires, is cleared manually or any entries, categories etc. involved is changed). This means that for most pageloads, complex database queries or taxing PHP operations (Twig templates are compiled to PHP) can be eliminated, which is usually a performance boost.


  will it will be ok using assets from a cloud front CDN setup too?


Yep, Craft is easily set up with external asset sources, and S3/CloudFront is supported. You will need a Craft Pro license, though.