Do you use CloudFlare? If yes, please explain why. I'm trying the free CloudFlare version on some of my websites to see how it works. Also, do you recommend to use any special options?
It's a depends situation. Sometime it can causes pages to load slower. Also need to make sure your servers will work with the service to avoid issues.
Yes. Specially if you have a static HTML website it is very useful. Like SSS said it will depend on your situation. Please provide more details as to what kind of websites are you implementing CloudFlare on.
I would recommend you stay away from cloudshare. It will block a lot of legit users from entering your site as well as it will NOT CACHE YOUR PAGES. Search around and you will see how people are having issues with cloudflare when their site goes down. Instead of the cached page they put their own link saying that the website is down no cache page is available.
I am using on one of my IPB forums and e-commerce sites. While, I haven't seen any long down time but for us it helps against spammers.
Well, can you say this for sure that they do not block a lot of legit users as well? I found that to be the case. I moved away from them and now AKismet helps me with that - no problem.
I can't say for sure but as of yet, no one has complained that they are blocked out. I am using clouldfare since last 3-5 months and it's working well.
"It will block a lot of legit users from entering your site as well as it will NOT CACHE YOUR PAGES." The users that are challenged with a captcha (NOT blocked) are done so because their IPs have shown problematic behavior online recently (spam, exploit attackers, etc.). You can override this behavior by whitelisting the IP(s) of a user(s), or you can change your security level settings. "NOT CACHE YOUR PAGES" We don't cache pages per se. We cache static content by default. The Always Online feature will show a limited version of your site and does cache some HTML if your server goes down, but the feature does have some limitations (server response codes). "Instead of the cached page they put their own link saying that the website is down no cache page is available." This page is only triggered when (a) your server is down/having issues, or (b) something is blocking requests from CloudFlare's IPs. Users should make sure our IPs are whitelisted (firewall, .htacess rules, etc.).
Just a quick note that we do not cache static HTML by default (we cache static content files by default). You can set PageRules for advanced caching to cache static HTML.
I've used CloudFlare before and love it. Haven't experienced any of the blocking/non-cached issues complained about here.
Thank you for your reply. Let me clarify the confusion this post may create to fellow webmasters. "It will block a lot of legit users from entering your site as well as it will NOT CACHE YOUR PAGES." The users that are challenged with a captcha (NOT blocked) are done so because their IPs have shown problematic behavior online recently (spam, exploit attackers, etc.). You can override this behavior by whitelisting the IP(s) of a user(s), or you can change your security level settings. -------- - Whitelist the IPs you say? I won't know the IPs of the users coming through a search engine. The customer support tops it with their attitude. I would ask other webmaster's to think if they know the IPs of all the visitors they get. That was an extremely lame suggestion, I hope that comes from the books of cloudflare and not something damoncloudflare himself/herself came up with. If I have to change my security settings to such levels where you guys just ignore all threats what is the point of sending my traffic to you guys first? The point I was raising is that the system is not perfect - in fact far far from perfect. Even far from usable. Therefore, changing the security system through your interface is not something I fancy. I fixed it by bypassing cloudflare. Works fine for me. Akismet is pretty good at it and for anyone who has spam problem I would recommend AKismet against cloudflare. "NOT CACHE YOUR PAGES" We don't cache pages per se. We cache static content by default. The Always Online feature will show a limited version of your site and does cache some HTML if your server goes down, but the feature does have some limitations (server response codes). ----- When my site went down, you guys displayed a page that said the site is down. We do not have a page cached for this site. This message was there even I wanted to visit my homepage. One of the sites was a wordpress blog which could have been cached. At least the homepage. But none was cached. When I contacted support they blamed me that I must have purged cache from your system. I knew it was time to move away from cloudflare. Want me to paste the email here? I can. "Instead of the cached page they put their own link saying that the website is down no cache page is available." This page is only triggered when (a) your server is down/having issues, or (b) something is blocking requests from CloudFlare's IPs. Users should make sure our IPs are whitelisted (firewall, .htacess rules, etc.). -------- Yes, isn't the idea of having cloudflare that you will show the cached version that tell the site is operating in cached mode, instead of a message that says site is down? What I am saying here is that if Google visits my website while it is down, it will see that the site now has only one link on the homepage to the cloud flare website. All my link juice will be passed to you guys. What do I get? Zilch. This is pure evil and I do not see any other reason why you guys would put that link there.
The thing is, the users that are blocked are mostly the search traffic. They won't complain as they were coming to you for the first time with the potential to become regulars. But they never made that far. Even if they were asked to solve a captcha, they will just go back and click on next search result. The thing is, note your current search traffic, disable cloudflare for a week and then do a comparison. If you do not see any increase it means your website is doing fine and you can continue using cloudflare. I doubt that will be the case though.
I gave up them because they displaying Adsense ads and try to make money from our site by blocking human visitors too.
The CloudFlare challenge pages are triggered if a visitor has shown problematic behavior online recently by IP (this is NOT shown to all users). It is ONLY shown to visitors that are trying to access your site from an IP that has shown bad activity online & I can assure you were are not challenging people to make money (our data sources have to have shown them doing something like spam, exploit attacks, etc.) The AdSense stuff will quite honestly likely go away in the future for that page. You can adjust your security level to override the challenge behavior in your security level settings, and you can also override the challenge behavior by whitelisting IPs.
Most users never even see a captcha. If some of your traffic comes from regions with a lot of spam or infected computers, however, they will see one if our data sources have identified them as problematic within the past two weeks (this challenge by IP also goes away if no other bad activity is shown after two weeks). And, again, it is quite easy to adjust your security level settings within your CloudFlare account. We really shouldn't impact your SEO, SERPs or visitors in any way. "The thing is, note your current search traffic, disable cloudflare for a week and then do a comparison" A number of users have actually reported that their traffic increased & other measures improved (decreased bounce rates).
"Yes, isn't the idea of having cloudflare that you will show the cached version that tell the site is operating in cached mode, instead of a message that says site is down? What I am saying here is that if Google visits my website while it is down, it will see that the site now has only one link on the homepage to the cloud flare website. All my link juice will be passed to you guys. What do I get? Zilch. This is pure evil and I do not see any other reason why you guys would put that link there." Huh? If your server was down entirely, Google isn't going to index your site temporarily. I don't see the difference. ""Yes, isn't the idea of having cloudflare that you will show the cached version that tell the site is operating in cached mode, instead of a message that says site is down?" The Always Online feature does not display a full version of your site when your server is down. If we have something in cache, it will generally display about 3 pages for visitors while your server is down (things like POSTs would also not work, since your back end server is down). We're not really gaining any SEO benefits because that page is appearing with our link. If you look at what is displayed when your site isdown, it is your URL that is being returned. If you still think that you don't want this feature, then turn it off and a generic error message from your server will be displayed. Note: Always Online does have some limitations right now. We'll change the feature in the future so users can pin specific pages that they want to display when the server is down. Paid users also have the capability of customizing CloudFlare error messages as well.