What is Cloudflare ? How does it help webmasters ?
- Thread starter Digital Doctor
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damoncloudflare
Active member
We do show reports that show the page load comparison times and bandwidth saved (have to note there is a currently a bug where page load isn't working properly).
damoncloudflare
Active member
Very unusual for a site to be slowed down by CloudFlare. It is very important to make sure that something at your host or server isn't limiting our requests. Did any of these situations apply? It is also very important that only subdomains that are going over port 80 are proxied by CloudFlare. If not, then the DNS entry needs to have a gray cloud subdomains going over other ports.
CTXMedia
Well-known member
Okay, sounds good - can you get a regional overview? Bandwidth used per region, e.g. Europe, US, Middle East, China, Russia, Australia, etc.?
Just to gauge the spread of the content and how much of the round-trip is being saved by localised content delivery.
damoncloudflare
Active member
"Okay, sounds good - can you get a regional overview? Bandwidth used per region, e.g. Europe, US, Middle East, China, Russia, Australia, etc.?"
Not available at this time. But a good feature suggestion!
Not available at this time. But a good feature suggestion!
AzzidReign
Well-known member
Does CloudFlare offer support against DDoS?
Deepmartini
Well-known member
How does cloudflare work with private membership sites and content you can only access via logging in? Does it cache this content as well? Doesn't that mean it is copying your content across the CDN then anyone can get access to it? Please explain more. How do I know my information is safe?!
Decent60
Well-known member
It only logs content that is open to the public. It's impossible for it to cache hidden areas on your site due to the permissions setup written in php. If your forum is completely open or has minimal restricted areas, this would be a good solution if you have had bad experiences in the past with your host.
Markos
Well-known member
Great question.
Another question: What's the difference with CloudeFlare and a standard cdn service like maxcdn? Can i use both?
Andy Huang
Well-known member
I've been passively recommending this since November.
I use it on two of my sites, one small image board I have w/ my Asian friends who doesn't use forums, and one small XenForo installation.
Since my XenForo installation doesn't get much traffic, I cannot comment much about it.
But, for my other site, I've noticed consistently roughly 60% bandwidth saved (~50GB/mn for my small image filled site), and generally loads faster than without.
The only thing I can think of is it may break any server monitoring tool (http ping) you currently have in place. Since you are changing your DNS to theirs, and server monitoring tool pings their server to check for outage, it may or may not detect it in the event of a real outage. Changing your monitoring tool to use IP address instead of your domain name will resolve that.
How does CloudFlare differ from conventional CDN...
Short answer: CloudFlare sits in the middle, conventional CDN sits separately.
Long answer:
If you use conventional CDN, you setup your own DNS (typically) to point certain CNAME (such as cdn.mysite.com) to the CDN provider's server, and put your things there (manually or automatically, depending on how much you integrate). It is typically a one-trick pony where it distributes your information across its network, and provides it to end-user upon request.
On the other hand, if you use CloudFlare, you change your name server to CloudFlare, tries to fetch your DNS configuration from your current provider (with your aid). After it is setup, they fetch the data from your server, and relay to the end user, while caching public content for subsequent requests. CloudFlare also, with your permission, auto minifies (strips excess spaces, new line, etc.) your javascript/css to help make things load even more quickly. Additionally, CloudFlare integrates -- to some extent, I don't know detail -- with third party behavioral monitoring sites (I know of Project HoneyPot being used, not sure about others), so they can pro-actively spit out a CAPTCHA for potential known bots/spammers. There are definitely false positives from my experience, but the amount is low enough to disregard for me, and you can turn this feature off if you do not want to use it.
You can use CloudFlare and MaxCDN at the same time... until your pre-paid bucket depletes. After that, I don't really see the reason to use both
I use it on two of my sites, one small image board I have w/ my Asian friends who doesn't use forums, and one small XenForo installation.
Since my XenForo installation doesn't get much traffic, I cannot comment much about it.
But, for my other site, I've noticed consistently roughly 60% bandwidth saved (~50GB/mn for my small image filled site), and generally loads faster than without.
The only thing I can think of is it may break any server monitoring tool (http ping) you currently have in place. Since you are changing your DNS to theirs, and server monitoring tool pings their server to check for outage, it may or may not detect it in the event of a real outage. Changing your monitoring tool to use IP address instead of your domain name will resolve that.
How does CloudFlare differ from conventional CDN...
Short answer: CloudFlare sits in the middle, conventional CDN sits separately.
Long answer:
If you use conventional CDN, you setup your own DNS (typically) to point certain CNAME (such as cdn.mysite.com) to the CDN provider's server, and put your things there (manually or automatically, depending on how much you integrate). It is typically a one-trick pony where it distributes your information across its network, and provides it to end-user upon request.
On the other hand, if you use CloudFlare, you change your name server to CloudFlare, tries to fetch your DNS configuration from your current provider (with your aid). After it is setup, they fetch the data from your server, and relay to the end user, while caching public content for subsequent requests. CloudFlare also, with your permission, auto minifies (strips excess spaces, new line, etc.) your javascript/css to help make things load even more quickly. Additionally, CloudFlare integrates -- to some extent, I don't know detail -- with third party behavioral monitoring sites (I know of Project HoneyPot being used, not sure about others), so they can pro-actively spit out a CAPTCHA for potential known bots/spammers. There are definitely false positives from my experience, but the amount is low enough to disregard for me, and you can turn this feature off if you do not want to use it.
You can use CloudFlare and MaxCDN at the same time... until your pre-paid bucket depletes. After that, I don't really see the reason to use both
damoncloudflare
Active member
We can help mitigate the impact of an attack on your site. That being said, we're not a full DDoS solution & we would strongly recommend using other options to help limit DDoS issues.
Wildcat Media
Well-known member
I tried an experiment with SimpleCDN in the past--I tried hosting static images for our "big board" vB (which lives on a dedicated server) at SimpleCDN and it worked well. I was trying to see if our http requests for the static files dropped, and see if there was a drop in bandwidth. It dropped somewhat, but not enough to warrant upgrading to anything beyond the trial account at that time. Knowing I could make it work, though, made it good for future reference. For what we needed, it would cost us far less to pay a CDN to host those files vs. getting an additional dedicated server.
CloudFlare acts more like a proxy, to put it in the simplest of terms. SimpleCDN, on the other hand, is a pure content delivery network (at least the way I was using it). Some of the others at the hosting company I use have had good luck with CloudFlare. One user commented that his traffic dropped by "about 30%" due to using CloudFlare, which would consist of the cached static files and the rejection of the malicious traffic.
I am going to try it on a couple of my sites, even though they do not have large volumes of traffic as of yet. I am considering trying it on our dedicated server for the big board forum, but only after I work the bugs out of setting it up properly.
CloudFlare acts more like a proxy, to put it in the simplest of terms. SimpleCDN, on the other hand, is a pure content delivery network (at least the way I was using it). Some of the others at the hosting company I use have had good luck with CloudFlare. One user commented that his traffic dropped by "about 30%" due to using CloudFlare, which would consist of the cached static files and the rejection of the malicious traffic.
I am going to try it on a couple of my sites, even though they do not have large volumes of traffic as of yet. I am considering trying it on our dedicated server for the big board forum, but only after I work the bugs out of setting it up properly.
damoncloudflare
Active member
Hi Rudy,
Great. Please let me know if you have any questions. I generally recommend that folks review this information about common questions/issues.
Great. Please let me know if you have any questions. I generally recommend that folks review this information about common questions/issues.
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