Cloudflare and Xenforo? (Any better alternatives?)

F

Fleur

Member
Hi,
We are using Cloudflare for their SSL and Anti-DDOS protection.

Their SSL license and Anti-DDOS works great.
Their CDN works great too.


I get customers who complain that our XenForo site is slow, times-out often (don't know why) or XenForo loads very slowly with Cloudflare, despite us re-installing XenForo twice, moving to Core i7-2600K with SSD drives.


Does anyone know a CDN network with Anti-DDOS, hacker protection, CDN delivery better than Cloudflare?
 
Fleur said:
Hi,
We are using Cloudflare for their SSL and Anti-DDOS protection.

Their SSL license and Anti-DDOS works great.
Their CDN works great too.


I get customers who complain that our XenForo site is slow, times-out often (don't know why) or XenForo loads very slowly with Cloudflare, despite us re-installing XenForo twice, moving to Core i7-2600K with SSD drives.


Does anyone know a CDN network with Anti-DDOS, hacker protection, CDN delivery better than Cloudflare?
Click to expand...
Incapsula.com seems to be good working alternative. A lot easier to configure as well.
 
TBH I've just disabled cloudflare, it's really gone down hill over the last few months. I'm pretty sure they were intentionally showing the 'site offline' page, smothered with their ads whenever they wanted. I'd visit my site several times a day, and it'd be reported as offline. Server loads were fine, DNS was fine, etc, the second I turn cloudflare off, the site works again.

That combined with their stupidly weak DNS system (as proved by the complete outage not long ago) was the final straw for me. Moved away and our earnings are up, analytics is showing better performance, etc.
 
Same issue here Rick. One of my sites (not powered by XF) was on CloudFlare till last month. The "site offline" page would show at least 3 times a day when I knew the server was fine. Since disabling it, my site has been faster and hasn't had a single moment of downtime.
 
RickM said:
TBH I've just disabled cloudflare, it's really gone down hill over the last few months. I'm pretty sure they were intentionally showing the 'site offline' page, smothered with their ads whenever they wanted. I'd visit my site several times a day, and it'd be reported as offline. Server loads were fine, DNS was fine, etc, the second I turn cloudflare off, the site works again.

That combined with their stupidly weak DNS system (as proved by the complete outage not long ago) was the final straw for me. Moved away and our earnings are up, analytics is showing better performance, etc.
Click to expand...

I had exactly the same issues with them a year ago when I first started using claudflare. While using them I was often getting site offline pages although other sites on the same server which don't use claudflare was online, so I stopped using it.
 
I have read a lot of issues like this recently and declined to even try cloudflare because of it. Most people I know who have used it have had nothing but trouble, and unnecessary downtime. That's sort of what it's meant to stop.
 
rollthebones said:
CloudFlare sucks, if you want an affordable CDN look at MaxCDN.
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I use MaxCDN, it has done wonders for my community and it has shaved off more then 10 seconds for my non US members.

All in all if your in the USA it takes about a second to load it, since using MaxCDN, it takes about 3 for foreign members, maybe less.
 
I've only used Cloudflare briefly on two sites, but am in the process of removing it as well

Same issue as mentioned here, sites claiming to be offline when they aren't, despite the IPs being white listed etc.
 
Brandon Sheley said:
I'll never use cloudflair on my sites or suggest it to others. I don't need help blocking legit users from using my site. ;)
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The only time anyone gets blocked is if you fudge your security settings. I had it set to low/off and it was fine for that, it was just the false offline notices that were a problem.
 
RickM said:
The only time anyone gets blocked is if you fudge your security settings. I had it set to low/off and it was fine for that, it was just the false offline notices that were a problem.
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Well then every site I've visited that uses cloudflair must not know what they are doing. ;)
 
I just switched over to Incapsula couple hours back.

I am monitoring the site and will update this thread soon.

What's the difference?
I host on Xeon E3 1245v2 and SSD drives, Gigabyte pipe. Latest PHP, MariaDB. Server utilization is less than 3% for most of the day, Bandwidth is less than 20GB/month. For almost a year, customers complained about slow site, time-outs, weird "Site Down" notice for no apparent reason.


Cloudflare, I have gone through their support several times. Disabled Rocket feature, disabled minify JS, disabled their CDN. Custom rules addition to exclude Xenforo, Added high security (Pro Feature). Still slowness for no reason. On various occasions, customer would tell they waited 1 minute (or even more), site was usually unavailable to mobile customers. Android customers with old browsers often get blocked and sucks since most of our customers are Mobile users.


...


Incapsula, I had an initial problem because Cloudflare was doing the DNS. So I switched back to Registrars (GoDaddy's) DNS and setup @ and WWW aliases as requested.

Waited 3 hours for DNS update (Maybe more since GoDaddy is slower) -

Incapsula still reported that DNS still points to CloudFlare. Suspended Cloudflare. Still, Incapsula reported that our DNS points to ClouldFlare. Waited 45 minutes while trying to update GoDaddy wondering why GoDaddy DNS don't work? Customers complain of site invalid and points to Cloudflare Site Down.

(Fed-up now...) Copied and pasted the rest of info to GoDaddy from CloudFlare. Then I disabled the Pro Hosting plan. Waited another 30 minutes while wondering if the instructions on Incapsula is correct?

(Angry...) Took screenshots of the domains config and other necessary information. Deleted my domains from CloudFlare. After 30 minutes later, Incapsula works.


Cloud - Xenforo upload fails
Incap - Xenforo upload works

Cloud - Xenforo constant timeout and delays. Images do not load. Xencarta error with timeout.
Incap - instantaneous.

Cloud - RocketLoader messes XenForo.
Incap - nothing. their minify works and CDN works.

Cloud - Not sure about how they do their browser defenses, I get 2 or 3 spammers that leak through.
Incap - No results yet. Will inform later this week.


I am monitoring site. Will update this thread later this week.
 
@Fleur changing your DNS to any provider can take 24 - 72 hours....

I admit that tech has changed for the better and usually changing a DNS for me happens within minutes, but its still possible for it to take the full 24 - 72 hours (lots of factors to add into that time such as ISP, IP range, location, ect...)
 
RickM said:
IIRC as default its set to medium. If your IP is in their database (or any big database) for possible malicious activity, expect to be blocked ;)
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My IP wouldn't be blocked for anything ;)
I've seen others mention it as well, I really have no use for a mod so that's the main reason I'll never use it, I don't care for disallowing access to anyone that should see a site.
 
Cloudflare does take some trial-n-error to configure properly. There's no one config that works for all sites, even if they run the same base software.

I have Cloudflare (Free) working well on an XF site, but with several of the advanced features disabled (like Rocket Loader or Pre-Loader).
 
motowebmaster said:
I have Cloudflare (Free) working well on an XF site, but with several of the advanced features disabled (like Rocket Loader or Pre-Loader).
Click to expand...

I tried turning on/off RocketLauncher, Caching (Off/Basic/Simple/Agressive), Image Caching (Off/shrink image/cache/CDN), JS Minify (On/Off), CSS Compression (On/Off), Browser Check (On/Off), CDN Delivery (On/Basic/Off). Custom page settings, Custom Rules settings to no effect.


If you are having good results with Cloudflare - good for you. I didn't see anyone sharing best-practices settings information on exactly what to set. In the end, it got too much for us and had to let it go.
 
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