Here are the advantages of utilizing Cloudflare

Here are the advantages of utilizing Cloudflare

When I first heard about Cloudflare years ago, I thought, “Why do I need to use it?” Everything was fine with my site. Also, I had read about too many problems at the time.

After my site’s hosting company, WPEngine, started charging me for extra visits in 2014, I started using Cloudflare to stop bots and spam visits. That’s how I started using Cloudflare. I’ve been using it for years, and I’m so happy with this free service that I recommend it to everyone who reads ShoutMeLoud.

This guide is for you if you don’t use Cloudflare or have never heard of it. You can use this guide well even if you need to learn more about technology. So, let’s start this detailed tutorial about Cloudflare and learn about it.

4 good reasons to let Cloudflare handle your DNS

• Cloudflare stops hacking attempts and brute-force attacks

Certainly! Here’s an expanded version of the content on Cloudflare’s benefits and setting security levels for website accessibility:

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Cloudflare provides robust protection for websites by intercepting potentially harmful requests at the name-server level, preventing them from reaching your server. This proactive defense shields your site from a variety of threats including DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, SQL injections, and spam comments. By filtering out malicious traffic before it reaches your server, Cloudflare ensures that your website operates in a secure environment.

One of the common challenges users faced in the past was accessibility issues for their readers. This often occurred when the security settings on Cloudflare were set too high, inadvertently blocking legitimate visitors from accessing the site. It’s crucial to understand the impact of security settings on user experience and adjust them accordingly.

When configuring Cloudflare for your website, you have the option to set the security level to low, medium, or high. Each level offers varying degrees of protection, with higher settings implementing more stringent security measures. While it may be tempting to opt for maximum security, especially in the face of increasing cyber threats, setting the security level too high can potentially restrict access for users across different geographic locations.

Setting the security level to low strikes a balance between protection and accessibility. It allows legitimate traffic to pass through without stringent challenges, ensuring that visitors from all over the world can seamlessly access your content. This is particularly beneficial for websites with a global audience or those that rely on traffic from diverse sources.

Moreover, Cloudflare’s security features extend beyond just filtering malicious traffic. It includes features like SSL/TLS encryption, which secures data transmitted between visitors and your website. This encryption not only protects user privacy but also enhances trust and credibility, especially important for websites handling sensitive information such as e-commerce transactions or user registrations.

Another advantage of using Cloudflare is its content delivery network (CDN) capabilities. By caching content on Cloudflare’s servers distributed globally, it reduces latency and improves loading times for visitors accessing your site from different parts of the world. This enhances user experience, as faster loading speeds contribute significantly to lower bounce rates and higher engagement metrics.

Furthermore, Cloudflare offers analytics and insights into your website’s traffic patterns and security events. These tools provide valuable data to monitor and optimize your site’s performance and security posture. By understanding incoming traffic trends and potential threats, you can make informed decisions to further enhance your website’s resilience and user experience.

• You don’t have to wait for the propagation when you change hosting

When I switched from WPEngine to Cloudways hosting, I learned about this benefit. You don’t have to wait for DNS propagation to happen when you use Cloudflare.

Change the server’s IP address from your Cloudflare dashboard, and your domain name will start pointing to the new host right away.

• Free CDN

One of Cloudflare’s standout features is its free Content Delivery Network (CDN), which offers significant advantages for website performance without altering URLs or introducing subdomains like cdn.domain.com. Setting up Cloudflare’s CDN is straightforward and seamlessly integrates with your existing website structure, making it a preferred choice for many webmasters and site owners.

I’ve personally relied on Cloudflare’s CDN for several years across various websites, including ShoutMeLoud, and have found it exceptionally reliable with no noticeable impact on SEO performance. The CDN functionality works by caching static files such as CSS, JavaScript, and images across Cloudflare’s global network of servers. When a user accesses your website, these files are served from the nearest Cloudflare server, reducing latency and speeding up page load times significantly.

One of the key benefits of Cloudflare’s CDN is its global reach. Cloudflare has strategically positioned servers worldwide, depicted on their Network map, ensuring that content is delivered swiftly regardless of where your users are located. This global presence not only enhances user experience by minimizing wait times but also contributes to lower bounce rates and improved engagement metrics.

Performance improvements facilitated by Cloudflare’s CDN are substantial, often boosting site speed by up to 50%. This enhancement is crucial for retaining visitors and encouraging them to explore more of your content, which can positively impact metrics such as average session duration and conversion rates.

Moreover, Cloudflare’s CDN operates seamlessly behind the scenes without requiring users to modify URLs or implement complex configurations. This simplicity makes it accessible even for those with minimal technical expertise, allowing them to leverage advanced caching capabilities effortlessly.

From an SEO perspective, using Cloudflare’s CDN can actually benefit your site. Faster load times contribute to better user experience, which search engines like Google prioritize when ranking websites. Improved performance can indirectly lead to higher search engine rankings, demonstrating how Cloudflare’s CDN supports both technical optimization and user-centric metrics.

In practice, after experiencing the benefits on ShoutMeLoud, I extended Cloudflare’s CDN to all my other websites. This decision was driven by the tangible performance gains observed across multiple platforms, reinforcing Cloudflare’s role as a dependable solution for optimizing web performance at scale.

In conclusion, Cloudflare’s free CDN is a game-changer for website owners seeking to enhance performance without compromising on user experience or SEO integrity. By leveraging Cloudflare’s global network to cache and serve static content efficiently, you can achieve significant speed improvements and ensure fast, reliable access to your website’s resources worldwide. Whether you’re managing a single site or multiple domains, Cloudflare’s CDN stands out as a reliable tool for accelerating web performance and maximizing visitor engagement.

• Save server bandwidth

In today’s web hosting landscape, while many providers advertise unlimited bandwidth, some, like WPEngine, still impose restrictions based on site traffic. This approach can lead to unexpected charges or service interruptions when traffic spikes occur. However, integrating Cloudflare into your website’s infrastructure can mitigate these issues significantly.

Cloudflare’s ability to block traffic from spam bots is a notable advantage that directly translates into bandwidth savings. By intercepting and filtering out malicious bot traffic at the network edge, Cloudflare prevents this unnecessary load from reaching your hosting server. This proactive approach not only enhances security but also optimizes bandwidth usage, ensuring that legitimate visitors receive seamless access to your site without unnecessary strain on resources.

For instance, leveraging Cloudflare for ShoutMeLoud resulted in substantial bandwidth savings, as evidenced by the impressive 375.6 GB of data preserved over recent months. This demonstrates the tangible impact of Cloudflare’s traffic filtering capabilities in real-world scenarios, where every byte of saved bandwidth contributes to operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Beyond bandwidth savings, Cloudflare offers a suite of features designed to enhance website performance and security. One such feature is Rocket Loader, which stands out for its ability to automatically load all JavaScript resources asynchronously. By deferring the loading of JavaScript until after the page has rendered, Rocket Loader accelerates page speed and improves overall responsiveness. This not only enhances user experience by reducing perceived load times but also contributes to higher engagement and lower bounce rates.

Additionally, Cloudflare provides free SSL (HTTPS) support, a crucial component for securing websites and protecting user data. While you may not have activated this feature yet, Cloudflare’s free SSL option ensures that all traffic between your visitors and your website remains encrypted and secure. This encryption is increasingly important in today’s digital landscape, where data privacy and security are paramount concerns for both users and regulatory bodies.

The accessibility of Cloudflare’s free SSL underscores its commitment to democratizing essential security measures, making HTTPS adoption accessible to websites of all sizes and budgets. Whether you’re running a personal blog, an e-commerce store, or a corporate website, Cloudflare’s SSL offering provides peace of mind and compliance with industry standards without incurring additional costs.

In summary, Cloudflare offers multifaceted benefits beyond bandwidth savings, including robust security features like spam bot blocking, performance enhancements with Rocket Loader, and essential SSL encryption—all available at no cost through its free tier. These features collectively contribute to a faster, more secure web experience while optimizing resource utilization and minimizing operational overhead. Whether you’re looking to improve site performance, safeguard sensitive data, or reduce hosting costs, Cloudflare emerges as a versatile and indispensable tool for modern website management.

What is Cloudflare and how does it work?

Before we can talk about Cloudflare, we need to know how the Internet works. Let’s say ShoutMeLoud.com is hosted on a web server with the IP address “9.9.9.9.” Now, when you type ShoutMeLoud.com into your browser, your browser sends a request to DNS and gets the answer “9.9.9.9.” This is how you can get to the site.

• You add CloudFlare Name-server to your domain when you set up CloudFlare.
• Now, Cloudflare starts checking all requests to your website for bad bots and attempts to hack.
• There are a few more steps in between, but in short, all the traffic that comes to your site goes through Cloudflare, which stops spam and illegal access and keeps your site safe at all times.
• Don’t forget that when you add Cloudflare to your website, nothing changes in terms of how it works.
• Only the traffic coming to your website is filtered. Here is a picture that shows what happens with Cloudflare and what happens without it:

I think everyone should start using Cloudflare because it’s free and you can always pay for more (as and when you require). Here, I’ll tell you the reasons why you should start using Cloudflare right away.

Important Cloudflare Features

• Apps: Cloudflare has both free and paid apps that can improve your experience as a user. One of the best apps that Cloudflare has to offer is SmartErrors, which replaces the boring 404 pages with a list of suggested pages to visit.
• This lowers the number of people who just leave the site without going anywhere else.
• UserVoice is another great app that lets you hear what your visitors think and get their ideas. Using the PunchTab app, you can also give free coupons or other rewards to people who come to your store often.
• Most of these apps can be installed by toggling the on/off button.
• Analytics: The analytics feature lets you see detailed information about your websites, such as the number of page views, the number of pages that have been crawled, the amount of bandwidth you have saved by using Cloudflare, and many other things.
• Threat Control: The threat control feature lets you put IP addresses, IP ranges, or even a whole country on a White List or a Black List to stop attacks on your website. There is also a list of IPs that were challenged and failed. 
• Development Mode: This feature is helpful if you make changes to your website often and want to stop Cloudflare from caching for a while.
• When you change images, JavaScript, or other content that can be cached, you should do this. The development mode lasts for 3 hours, but you can stop it sooner if you want to.
• Rocket Loader: Only advanced users should use this feature. It drastically cuts down the time it takes for a page to load by loading all JavaScript code in the background. People think that Cloudflare Rocket Loader could mess up AdSense. So, I don’t use Rocket Loaded, and I would suggest that you do the same.

Conclusion