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Cloudflare
It is a type of Content Delivery Network (CDN) product that is free. It provides protection from threats like identity theft and SQL injection.
It also helps in improving the performance of the website and increases the loading time speed by using its own numerous data centers located across the globe.
Its network works like a gigantic VPN. By this, we mean that the visitor of a website can access your site by getting redirected physically to the nearest server.
In simpler words, the loading of your website for your user will be faster if the data center is closer. This makes Cloudflare unique.
It also has another benefit. It helps in reducing bot crawls. This, however, can be harmful or helpful depending on its source. What is a bot crawl? Well, it is used to visit sites and crawl for the data on your site’s page.
Though these can help in catching thieves who rob content and use your site’s design without seeking your permission, they could also generate fake advertisement impressions, inject malware and spam using file backdoors, steal information and content from your site.
On a positive note, you can think of Cloudflare to be a web proxy. Since your website’s cache can be accessed by your visitor, Cloudflare can block any suspicious content.
It can safeguard you from spambots, malicious viruses and from the flow of harmful web traffic.
How can Cloudflare be Used?
Cloudflare isn’t a web hosting company. This makes it unique. After your website is up and functioning, its DNS settings can be changed by you to the servers of Cloudflare. This leads to caching your site.
When you change the settings on your domain name, you permit Cloudflare to cache your website’s copy.
Cloudflare also gives you an alternative to controlling the traffic received by your site.
So, if any discrepancies occur that point at the high traffic patterns and security threats created by you, Cloudflare will keep track of and regulate the source of the malicious traffic. When your website is exposed to threats, you will get to know about it easily because of this.
This mainly means that your site’s visitors will always get to view your website. The server of Cloudflare will request your hosting provider to give them a copy of your web page. They will then connect that particular visitor who asked for the site to this web page copy.
Cloudflare offers many plugins that can be used by you. Google Analytics plugin is the most widely used.
It is a plugin that is available widely and is recommended for free for most sites on the internet. This plugin doesn’t need you to go back to the source code to make it work.
Also, another element that is impressive about Cloudflare is the product adaptability to the daily webmaster.
Say, for instance, the new webmasters who do not possess much technical information about codes of Google Analytics that helps monitor website tracking and traffic. Cloudflare comes to their rescue.
It uses the plugin and thereby sends the data to Google Analytics. That’s all that is needed. There is no need to worry about missing tags, if any, or about risking downtime, if any, by getting the code embedded.
Is Cloudflare Good for Me?
Managing each site is a task. And protecting its integrity is very stressful. Multiple sites will definitely need more time to be managed. You can use Cloudflare for free to manage one site only.
There are many paid choices that offer extra adaptability along with more options of plugins so that your visitors can have a great experience while visiting your site.
In general, many options are offered by this service for managing the web. It eliminates any server vulnerabilities.
From the money aspect, it provides hosting providers benefits without having the expensive services of the CDN. With the additional speed and security that comes along with this free version of the plugin, it is worth trying.
New web designers may find it challenging. They may not be able to build websites without having development-level issues.
Many tools are available if someone is keen on building websites that are functional. Many of these tools enhance the experience of the user by including measures that help in enhancing the security and performance of the site they build.
One of these solutions is Cloudflare that is able to help you maintain and enhance the stability of your website.
Below is a list compiled by us that talks about all the reasons why you should use Cloudflare and how this can help you. While making your site, there are many problems that you would like to overcome. A feature of Cloudflare may seem to work for you well.
Improve Performance of the Website
A great tool for helping your site’s web performance to improve in the short and long term, is Cloudflare. To create a website that is compatible with mobile devices and desktops, you could make use of this network.
It will make sure that your site will work on different platforms. Your web presence can be increased a lot if you get your website optimized for many platforms.
One other way of improving the performance of your site is through minimization and compression, reducing the size of your files to increase the responsiveness of your web page, bandwidth connection, and data storage overall.
Increasing the Speed of your Website
Having websites that load faster and have great connection speed is vital for website owners, especially those who depend on SEO and web traffic to build their presence online. Many features are included in Cloudflare that let its users improve the speed of their site.
By increasing the speed of your web pages, you will be able to reduce the bounce rate of your web pages.
In addition, you will not lose many visitors with time delay. When you use Cloudflare, you are able to store the static data anywhere. Also, you can let your visitors access this data using Cloudflare’s nearest data server.
Increased Security & Protection
One of the known benefits of utilizing Cloudflare is that it has enhanced protection and security features. This ensures that your server is secure. Many people use it typically to fight DDoS attacks that affect a server’s online traffic, network, or service.
The security network of Cloudflare works on about 21 million requests of HTTP per second on average and operates flawlessly with the same types of performance and security services.
Because of this, we can say that Cloudflare is easy to use. It will not affect the web performance of your site.
These features that we have spoken about are apt for web application’s protection from threats, safeguarding infrastructures of the network from attacks of DDoS, and getting the devices secured. To overcome hostile bots, hackers, and crawlers, this feature may sound just right.
Worldwide CDN
If you are looking to deliver site content effectively, the Content Delivery Network of Cloudflare could be useful.
This is done by using reliable static content caching that depends on where your site’s users are coming from, what information they search, and how many times they ask for the available data.
Few of the contents that are compatible with CDN are JavaScript files, HTML pages, images, and stylesheets. When this content is cached, the user’s experience on your site could be improved. And the content could be delivered more quickly.
Free & Easy Access
Many data networks need application or subscription fees. At the same time, Cloudflare provides a plan for anyone to use it for free. Its plan is perfect for people having WordPress personal blogs or sites that do not have to follow business-critical measures.
But you need to remember that Cloudflare does have other plans to offer that have more features. These plans, however, are paid ones. Having said that, the free plan is still apt for the maintenance of simple domains online.
You can still get an SSL certificate that is shared and required protection against DDoS when building the content of your website.
Setting up Cloudflare is really easy. If you own a domain or website that is designed to be used on any type of device, you could get your site optimized by using the Cloudflare’s global network. You don’t need any additional hardware, software, or changes in coding to operate.
Conclusion
You will find many reasons that support the use of Cloudflare in order to improve the website’s security and performance. If you own a blog or website, it would be good to swiftly distribute deliverable content for promising viewers. You can also check our article on DDoS: What is it? & How can I Protect my Site?
One important reason for considering using Cloudflare is to minimize the amount of DDoS attacks that could hit your site. The safety of your website is important.
There are many plans that you could choose from. But Cloudflare is one of the best if you are looking to build a cached network for the content of your website, distribute it to your site’s audiences, and keep your site responsive all the time. Any good website needs these tools for maintaining its top quality.