Setup Cloudflare on vBulletin 3.8.11 (preparing to switch to Xenforo)

Grover

Grover

Well-known member
Hi @eva2000, your name was mentioned on the Cloudflare community, as someone said: “Eva2000 is a massive user of Cloudflare and Xenforo. I’m sure he’ll be along soon to say how well they work together and things to look out for”.

Our hostingprovider put our forum temporarily offline, since we were under a DDoS attack. We are still running vBlletin 3.8.11 (can you believe it? 😉) and our hostingprovider requested us to use Cloudflare. I have no technical knowledge on these matters, so I thought of asking you and other technical users in this forum for advice.

We are in the process of testing Xenforo, to migrate our vBulletin 3.8.11 board to Xenforo asap. But before we can continue the test traject we need a properly functioning live board on vBulletin 3.8.11 that works with Cloudflare.

I did put out a support ticket to vBulletin and this was the answer I received from their support department, on my question “As a non-technical person I have no knowledge on this level and so I was wondering if vBulletin 3.8.11 is compatible with Cloudflare? And if yes, what do I need to do to make vBulletin 3.8.11 work with Cloudflare”:

Hello,

We have never tested vBulletin 3.X with Cloudflare. The only kind of compatibility it might have is setting the proxy values in the includes/config.php file.

The variations of these that we ship for vBulletin 6 look like this:

//default configuration for Cloudflare proxy.
$config['Misc']['proxyiplist'] = '103.21., 103.22., 103.31., 104.16., 108.162., 131.0., ' .
'141.101., 162.158., 172.64., 173.245., 188.114., 190.93., 197.234., 198.41., ' .
'2400:cb00:, 2405:b500:, 2606:4700:, 2803:f800:, 2c0f:f248:, 2a06:98c0:';

$config['Misc']['proxyipheader'] = 'HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP';

Putting these at the bottom of your includes/config.php file making sure it is above any closing ?>. This will tell vBulletin to handle incoming Cloudflare IP Addresses. There is no other setting in vBulletin 3.8.11 to deal with CloudFlare.
Click to expand...

  • Can you or anyone tell me if I need to add these lines to my config.php indeed for vBulletin 3.8.11?
  • What else do I need to set in Cloudflare itself to make it work with my vBulletin 3.8.11 board? (I could use instructions/a manual of some sort).
  • And last… if I setup Cloudflare for my vBulletin board and let my vBulletin board be migrated to Xenforo in a few weeks, will this cause any issues for my new Xenforo board?

(@Slavik is kindly helping us out with our migration to Xenforo and with the post above I am trying to figure out if I (as a non-technical person) can figure out how to setup Cloudflare myself for my vBulletin board. If I can’t still manage it myself, I will ask for further personal assistance on specifically this 👍)

Thanks for any insights!
 
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@eva2000 and others (cc @digitalpoint as per @Digital Doctor’s tip)

This is what Google Gemini told me 🤓:

Prompt

What do I need to do to setup Cloudflare for my vBulletin 3.8.11 forum?
Click to expand...


Answer

Setting up Cloudflare for a vBulletin 3.8.11 forum involves a few key steps to ensure proper functionality, especially since vBulletin 3.8.11 is an older version. The general process is similar to setting up Cloudflare for any website, but you need to be mindful of specific configurations for forums to avoid issues with caching and user IP addresses.


General Setup Steps 🛠️

  1. Create a Cloudflare Account and Add Your Site: Go to the Cloudflare website and sign up. Once logged in, click "Add a Site" and enter your domain name. Choose a plan, such as the free plan, which is sufficient for many forums. Cloudflare will then scan and import your existing DNS records.
  2. Update Nameservers: Cloudflare will provide you with new nameservers. You need to log in to your domain registrar (where you purchased your domain) and replace your current nameservers with the ones Cloudflare provides. This is a crucial step that points your domain's traffic through Cloudflare's network.
  3. Configure DNS Records: After the nameservers are updated, Cloudflare will manage your DNS. Double-check that all your existing DNS records, especially your "A" records (for your domain and www), "AAAA" records (if you use IPv6), and "MX" records (for email), have been correctly imported. For the records that you want to be routed through Cloudflare's proxy (to get the benefits of their CDN and security), ensure the orange cloud icon is on. For things like email records, you'll want to make sure the cloud is greyed out, indicating that DNS is not proxied.


vBulletin-Specific Settings ⚙️
​
Because Cloudflare acts as a reverse proxy, it can sometimes cause issues with how vBulletin identifies a user's true IP address. By default, vBulletin will see Cloudflare's IP address for all traffic, which can disrupt security features and logging. To fix this, you need to configure vBulletin to restore the original visitor IP. Cloudflare provides instructions for this, which often involves adding a small code snippet to your vBulletin configuration file (config.php).

Additionally, for optimal performance and to prevent login or admin panel issues, it's recommended to set up Page Rules in Cloudflare. This is particularly important for the vBulletin Admin Control Panel (AdminCP) and other dynamic sections of your forum.

Here's how to do that:

  1. Log in to your Cloudflare dashboard and go to the Rules section, then select Page Rules.
  2. Create a new Page Rule.
  3. For the URL, use a wildcard to target your AdminCP, for example: yourdomain.com/admincp/*.
  4. Set the following settings:
    1. Cache Level: Bypass
    2. Disable Performance: On
    3. Security Level: High (or higher)
  5. Save and deploy the rule. This ensures that the AdminCP is not cached and that you get the highest level of security for this sensitive area.
Remember, a lot of the general Cloudflare settings, such as SSL/TLS encryption mode, caching levels, and security settings, can be adjusted for your specific needs, but the steps above are a good starting point to get your vBulletin forum running smoothly with Cloudflare.
—-
 
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Thanks Digital Doctor for chiming in, I have cc-ed Digital Point now in my posting above.

Another thing, I found this information on the Cloudflare developer website:

developers.cloudflare.com

Using Cloudflare with various forums

Many widely used forum platforms are compatible with Cloudflare.
developers.cloudflare.com developers.cloudflare.com

Cloudflare acts as a reverse proxy, meaning that all visitor IP addresses will become Cloudflare-affiliated IP addresses. If you are using services like Stopforumspan or blocking registration by IP address, you need to restore original visitor IPs.
Click to expand...

Hmmm. I do block user registrations by IP address, since we are confronted with an enormous amount of spambots unfortunately on our vB 3.8.11 board.

I wonder how it easy it will become (for a novice webmaster like myself) to block original IP’s, after I activate Cloudflare for my forum.
 
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Cloudflare is relatively easy to make work with existing vBulletin or XenForo sites. Create Cloudflare account, add your zone (domain), switch over DNS servers to Cloudflare's (make sure all your DNS records were migrated automatically).

Beyond that, vBulletin 3.x doesn't have any native Cloudflare support, so adding that blurb to your config file is the easiest route so you can see user's IPs (otherwise you will see users as coming from Cloudflare IPs). You don't need to do anything like that for XenForo (if you migrate) since it's all handled automatically.

Server-side IP blocks can be migrated to Cloudflare if you want, via IP access rules, here: https://dash.cloudflare.com/?to=/:account/:zone/security/security-rules

If you later migrate to XenForo, you can also manage (add, delete, etc.) IPs that are blocked via Cloudflare from within the XenForo admin area with my addon (if you had it installed).

1756999063807.webp
 
Why are we talking about Vb in the XF support forum?
I don't want to sound mean, but I find it unacceptable in 2025 to use a 14-year-old version of the forum!
 
beerForo said:
...with a DDOS complication
Click to expand...

His site will most likely also be hacked...
In my opinion, the only sensible steps are to install a new version of XF, launch the import immediately, and delete everything old, leaving only XF.

Obviously, he needs to update the PHP version, which will take the old forum offline. This could be a positive thing, and it doesn't matter whether the old form is online or not for the migration to XF.

The important thing is the MOD to maintain the URLs and not lose the SEO.

Import notes: vBulletin | Manual | XenForo

End-user documentation for XenForo
xenforo.com xenforo.com
 
Ricsca said:
Why are we talking about Vb in the XF support forum?
I don't want to sound mean, but I find it unacceptable in 2025 to use a 14-year-old version of the forum!
Click to expand...
In the context of clearly switching to XenForo, it's perfectly acceptable.

Ricsca said:
His site will most likely also be hacked...
In my opinion, the only sensible steps are to install a new version of XF, launch the import immediately, and delete everything old, leaving only XF.

Obviously, he needs to update the PHP version, which will take the old forum offline. This could be a positive thing, and it doesn't matter whether the old form is online or not for the migration to XF.

The important thing is the MOD to maintain the URLs and not lose the SEO.

Import notes: vBulletin | Manual | XenForo

End-user documentation for XenForo
xenforo.com xenforo.com
Click to expand...
This isn't what they asked for help with.
 
Cloudflare certainly became a huge success.

1757073814021.webp

In 2011 it was just a tiny company but they've become to go to solution for it seems a big chunk of the internet.

Digital Doctor

Thread 'What is Cloudflare ? How does it help webmasters ?'

http://www.cloudflare.com/

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It says it gives resources to small sites that were only previously available to large sites.
Anyone research this one before ?
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