What is Cloudflare ?
Cloudflare is a content delivery network. It becomes an intermediate service between the actual hosting provider and the user browsing the website with your domain name. When a user tries to check your website by entering your domain name, Cloudflare will check whether the user is genuine or not. It will then fetch the content related to that domain name for you to refer to the appropriate IP address. Cloudflare helps provide security and performance to these types of websites. Cloudflare is an Internet infrastructure provider whose idea is to increase the security, performance and reliability of anything connected to the Internet. Cloudflare offers most of the core features for free and makes setup simple to install and use. You can also use Cloudflare for your website for free by creating an account. If you have a medium website then you can use it for free and later you can use Paid Version as per your requirement.
How does cloudflare work ?
Cloudflare also improves site performance and accelerates your website loading times by using its multiple data centers located around the world. The Cloudflare network works like a giant VPN. This means that a site visitor will physically access your website by redirecting to the nearest server. What this means is simple: the closer to the data center, the faster your website will load for the user. This is unique to Cloudflare.
Security –
Cloudflare blocks malicious traffic before it reaches your origin web server. Cloudflare analyzes potential threats in visitor requests based on several characteristics:
visitor’s ip address
requested resource
Requested payload and frequency
client-defined firewall rules
A Domain Name Service (DNS) lookup, or ping, of a proxyed Cloudflare subdomain, returns the Cloudflare IP address. Cloudflare proxy (orange-clouded) masks your original IP address for DNS records so that attackers cannot bypass Cloudflare and attack your origin web server directly.
performance –
Cloudflare optimizes the delivery of website resources to your visitors. Cloudflare’s data center servers your website’s static resources and asks your origin web server for dynamic content. Cloudflare’s global network provides a fast route from your site visitors to our data centers, which will be directly available to visitors requesting your site. Even with Cloudflare between your website and your visitors, resource requests reach your visitors quickly.
Reliability –
Cloudflare’s globally distributed Anycast network allows visitors to request the nearest Cloudflare data center. Cloudflare-distributed DNS responds to traffic to website visitors with a Cloudflare IP address that you proxy to Cloudflare. This distribution also provides security by hiding the unique IP address of your origin web server.
Fast Loading – If your website is on WordPress then you must use Cloudflare and connect your domain and hosting to Cloudflare, which will work in both the performance and security of your website.
Features of Cloudflare ?
Using Cloudflare increases the loading speed of your website and also works as a security for your website, so that your website directly provides protection from hackers attack. So you must use Cloudflare in your website. If you have a small website or you are a blogger then you can also use it for free and later you can use Paid Version as per your requirement. What are the features of Cloudflare, it is explained below.
DNS Hosting – DNS is responsible for translating domain names into IP addresses, Cloudflare provides DNS hosting to manage DNS records, and in most cases Cloudflare records take effect very quickly.
CDN – Content Delivery Network is a service that caches your website and serves the website to the geographically closest server which in turn increases the loading speed of the website significantly.
SSL TLS – Cloudflare offers free SSL for domain names and free wildcard subdomains for tier 3 hostnames.
Firewall – 5 to implement Cloudflare IP, AssetName, DatabaseSomething, URI, and Decision Method to implement.
Page Rules –Page rules limited to 3 rules provide various functions such as redirects, HTTPS rewriting, and more.
Analytics – Cloudflare Analytics provides simple analytics for your website.
What are the benefits of Cloudflare ?
Free Cloudflare CDN – Cloudflare CDN is a free and high-performance CDN that improves the speed of your website. Cloudflare caches your static files (CSS, JS, Images) and service according to its location.
Cloudflare SSL – It provides SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) for your site which is absolutely free. SSL increases the ranking of your site which is a good thing.
Fast Loading – If your website is on WordPress then you must use Cloudflare and connect your domain and hosting to Cloudflare, which will work in both the performance and security of your website.
Prevents Attacks – There is no dearth of jealous people in the world. One small mistake can ruin your hard work. This largely protects your site from attacks. You can see the screenshot of this site of mine.