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Security and speed are factors to consider when managing a website. The method that can be applied to fulfill these two things is to use Cloudflare. What is Cloudflare and how do you use it?
Before discussing what Cloudflare is, it is better to first know about the Content Delivery Network (CDN).
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Content Delivery Network (CDN)
What is a CDN?
CDN is a transparent backbone within the internet network that is responsible for content delivery. Invisibly, every time we interact with various CDNs. It can be while reading this article, shopping online, or viewing social media.
CDN's role is to reduce the latency between you and the server that stores website files and aims to increase the speed and performance of the site.
How CDNs Work
To reduce the distance between your visitors and your website, a CDN caches multiple storage locations. Each repository closest to the visitor is responsible for delivering content at the time the website visitor accesses it.
Simply put, a CDN puts your content in multiple places and provides website visitors with faster access.
What is Cloudflare?
CloudFlare is a content delivery network that acts as a proxy between websites and visitors. Serving cached static content from nearby locations (CloudFlare has many servers spread across several countries), it makes a website load faster.
As a simple illustration, CloudFlare acts as a liaison between visitors and website servers. The goal is that the website is protected from malicious attacks by website visitors.
Website visitors are divided into three types:
- Visitors: Here, visitors are humans visiting the website.
- Crawlers and robots: Crawlers and robots are visitors in the form of programs that aim to scan every page of a website, and can consume a lot of server bandwidth.
- Attackers: Attackers are visitors who aim to carry out attacks on websites.
By using the CloudFlare service, your website is guaranteed to be safe from various attacks and activities that can damage your performance.
In addition, CloudFlare serves all requests to the website and can offer more useful services when compared to traditional CDNs.
Here are some of the facilities that you will get using CloudFlare.
- Mitigation of DDoS attacks.
- Analytics for all requests made to the website.
- Easier SSL certificate installation.
- Network gateway between protocol.
CloudFlare function
When CloudFlare is enabled on your website, the nameservers will automatically follow the nameservers from CloudFlare. This will allow all activity on the website to be filtered and accessible faster because all traffic goes through CloudFlare first.
The following are some of the benefits that you can get from CloudFlare.
1. Direct visitors to the fastest connection
CloudFlare will direct visitors to the nearest data center, so websites can be accessed twice as fast as without using CloudFlare.
2. Keep an eye on malicious traffic on websites
CloudFlare will accept the access request and analyze whether the visitor is malicious or not. This is seen from the IP, resources accessed, and how often they access your site. If it looks like a threat, CloudFlare will block it.
3. Serves as a static content cache
CloudFlare functions as a cache of static content for websites, such as images, JavaScript, CSS, and others.
Why you should use Cloudflare on your website
Here are the reasons why you should use CloudFlare:
1. Improve website performance
CloudFlare has proxy servers spread across several countries and can redirect visitors to the nearest server. This is what makes the website page loading speed increase.
2. Website optimization on mobile devices
Technology like Rocket Loader and AutoMinify make your website to be accessed more quickly and efficiently through a variety of devices.
3. Protection from bots and threats
CloudFlare uses data from users as well as third parties to identify whether traffic to the website is a threat or not, and will try to stop it. You can view the report on the CloudFlare dashboard.
4. Protect website from spam comments
CloudFlare uses data from third parties to filter comments on your site.
5. Give a warning to visitors if the computer is infected with a virus
CloudFlare can warn visitors if their computer is infected with a virus and suggest cleaning it immediately. Usually, in order to access your website, visitors will be asked to enter a CAPTCHA.
6. Browsing mode offline
When hosting is experiencing problems, visitors will still be able to access the website because the website pages are already in CloudFlare's cache.
7. Reduce server resource usage
Requests on the server will decrease and this affects the server load, for example CPU usage on hosting. Even when there is a surge in visitors, the server load will remain safe.
8. Visitor reports
CloudFlare can display visitors whether they are search engine robots, threats, or traffic from human visitors.
Cloudflare integration
This service is integrated with several Content Management Systems (CMS), control panels, hosting service providers, e-commerce platforms, and so on. The goal is to provide services that can improve the security and performance of the systems that use them.
Cloudflare in WordPress in the form of a plugin can speed up page load speed, improve SEO quality, and protect websites from DDoS attacks and other security holes.
Besides WordPress, there is also a Magento CMS that provides integration with Cloudflare.
Cloudflare Pro
What is Cloudflare Pro?
Cloudflare Pro is one of the paid plans offered by Cloudflare. In addition to the Pro package, there are also Business and Enterprise packages. Of course, the advantages offered vary, especially compared to the free version.
When using the free version there are some limitations that you have to accept, such as the maximum number of users the rules apply and also other optimizations.
Even though it provides third-party services, the price offered is quite expensive. For example in the Pro package, you need to pay 20 dollars per month for only one domain.
However, there is no need to worry because Cloudflare also provides a free service with some limitations of course.
Conclusion
Based on the information above, Cloudflare could be an interesting solution to try. You can compare the performance of websites before and after using Cloudflare services.
At least some explanation related to what Cloudflare is and the functions of Cloudflare that have been discussed can provide an idea of the benefits of Cloudflare. In addition, it can also be applied to your website, so that it can meet the factors that make a good website size. Plus its caching feature is also an interesting value that can be considered when you want to use it.
The process of installing Cloudflare is quite easy to do. You can follow up with our next post on how to set up Cloudflare for a more detailed process.
If there is no difference or even makes the website performance decrease, then you can remove it at any time.
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