What is Cloudflare ? How does it help webmasters ?

...online even if your server is down....
From where?
Where is the data stored(collected) to supply it without my server?
 
jgas said:
It's free, you get your site faster, and you get less spammers: where the deal with the devil? :D
I understood that you have to change the dns, and that's all, so all off you traffic is routed to the "filters" of cloudflare, but i can't understand why it is free...
Click to expand...

Free for now !
 
jgas said:
It's free, you get your site faster, and you get less spammers: where the deal with the devil? :D
I understood that you have to change the dns, and that's all, so all off you traffic is routed to the "filters" of cloudflare, but i can't understand why it is free...
Click to expand...
We operate off of a freemium model, similar to other internet services, so paid subscribers get more advanced features (website preloader, reports every 15 minutes, etc.).

We make a little bit off of Google AdSense on the challenge pages (only to display AV products). This might change down the road, however.
 
"I'm a competent server administrator . .contributor to mandriva, php3, and now host many debian machines.
But I live in a country that essentially sits on the end of a single piece of fibre from San Francisco .. which means our international traffic sucks arse (think ping times of 250 to the USA)

I have a number of servers here in NZ; if cloudflare CDN can alleviate some of that ****ty expereince for me, its a winner.

Should help right now because we have datacenters in the USA (3), EU (1) & Asia (1) right now. More on the way early this year for Asia and EU.
 
Hi,

I guess I should clarify this...

People wouldn't be able to take actions (posting threads, replying to threads, purchasing, etc. etc) if your server is entirely down. Instead of getting a server is down message, however, they would receive a version of your site with cached content.

The Always Online feature is given to all domains active on CloudFlare, paid or not.
 
so say you have a thousand registered users logged into the site... what happens when they try to post, pm, whatever? They get an error message that the site is down (yet they're on the site)?
 
Kind of hard to explain because I didn't save a recent snapshot of what it looks like (will try to find an example).

-The top of the page will have an orange differentiator showing the site is offlin
-The top of the page will also state a cached version of the site is being served.
-The top of the page will state that the live site will automatically go live when the server is responding again.
-They will receive an error trying to take actions (posting, etc.). CloudFlare won't be able to show private content or handle form submission (POSTs) if your server is down. Visitors will be shown an error on these pages.
 
Although interesting, unless your site is completely public, this will have some great drawbacks. However I do find that concept to be greatly beneficial for news-type website and the like. I do see a great potential for a service like this and wish it all the best.
 
Decent60 said:
Although interesting, unless your site is completely public, this will have some great drawbacks. However I do find that concept to be greatly beneficial for news-type website and the like. I do see a great potential for a service like this and wish it all the best.
Click to expand...

Hi,

Why do you think this would be an issue? Curious. Is it better to get a server offline message, or is it better to serve some content while the server is offline? Some people may completely bounce if the site is returning server not found, whereas the offline browsing will allow some of your content to be displayed (while you're working on your server issues).

Would love your feedback.
 
damoncloudflare said:
Hi,

Why do you think this would be an issue? Curious. Is it better to get a server offline message, or is it better to serve some content while the server is offline? Some people may completely bounce if the site is returning server not found, whereas the offline browsing will allow some of your content to be displayed (while you're working on your server issues).

Would love your feedback.
Click to expand...

One of the communities that I run, with a forum, is completely private. There is no content visible besides a login box. This is due to the nature of the site: it handles Clans from different games on the internet. So rather displaying information that might be relevant to some but not others, I made it all private, having multiple people manage different sections so member would only see information pertaining to their Clan or their game. When my server goes down (which has only happened once due to my host issues, but several times due to my mishaps), I am able to switch a mock-up maintenance page located where my domain is registered so people don't really see a "down" server and point all traffic to that page.
This method works the best for my situation, however, it won't work for all people. Your service, however, would reduce the amount of time people would get a 404 error to that site. Since the only information public is a login page, it wouldn't really do my site any good, but I do see a great potential for other sites that are more open.
 

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