In the battle for speed, every millisecond counts online. In today’s post, I want to walk you through one of the best things you can do for your website’s speed and security. It’s called, Cloudflare – it’s 100% free, and 100% helpful to improving your website’s performance.
Interested? Thought so. Let’s go!
The problem of the World-Wide Web
The internet is a beautiful thing, bringing the world’s information to your fingertips.
When you first get set up with your hosting provider, you get your own little hard drive in the sky. A computer that lives somewhere in a data-center, that will spread your website, your message, and your inspiration to the world.
While this all seems magical at first, there is a slight wrinkle in the ointment.
The Ping Problem – It’s a big world out there
And attention spans are getting shorter. This introduces the problem of ping.
Ping is the time it takes for your visitor’s computer to find and connect to your website. The farther away your visitor is from your web host’s physical location, the longer it can take to connect.
Makes sense, right?
So if your data center is in Chicago, but your visitor is coming from Thailand, it will take much longer for them to find your website than if your web host was also in Thailand.
This can add several seconds onto the load speed of a website, and can impact people actually sticking around to seeing your awesome content.
While it may seem like a problem without a solution – CDN’s come in to save the day!
What is a CDN?
A CDN is not some oil that makes all your troubles go away… but I guess you could say it is the internet equivalent of it! CDN stands for Content Delivery Network, and it does exactly what it sounds like.
Your CDN will create a network of computers that all work together to optimize the delivery of your website.
In other words, it will take the content from your main web host, and duplicate it all around the world.
So now, when someone from Thailand visits your site, your CDN will smartly look for the best server to serve your site from, and it will speedily serve it right up!
Awesome and simple visual of the speed benefit of CDNs
What are the benefits of a CDN?
While speed is a major benefit, it is definitely not the only reason to plug into one. CDNs also help you use less bandwidth (saving you hosting money), increase your security, and enhance other apps in your WordPress site. Let’s take a quick look:
Reducing site bandwith through CDNs
Most web hosts charge you more as your traffic and bandwidth increase. Using CDNs, you can offload a lot of that bandwidth to the network of computers that are storing your site. This reduces the burden on your own host and allows you to stay on my entry-level plans for longer.
This benefit multiplies if you have client sites that you manage, as you are able to keep all the bandwidth on your host low.
How a CDN secures your website
When you first start out, security probably isn’t your first concern. But as your site grows, it becomes increasingly important to ensure your site is protected from any malware and malicious bot.
Luckily, CDNs come to the rescue here as well.
Because CDNs like Cloudflare serve such a large percentage of websites through their distributed networks, they have learned a thing or two. They have built up a massive (and ever growing) list of malicious domains, IP addresses, and other identifiers that indicate a threat to your website.
So if a bot or hacker tries to get into your site, the CDN can step in as a first line of defense and prevent the bad guy from ever getting to your actual server. Pretty neat!
A CDN can prevent downtime to your site
Most web hosts have solid 99%+ uptime, but nobody’s perfect. But if you have a CDN installed, your visitors will think you are!
That’s because if your site goes down – your CDN will be able to keep the most recent copy in its own memory and serve that to your users.
So while your actual website my have gone down, you have hundreds of duplicates that are humming along just fine!
Why Cloudflare vs the others?
This article is focused on Cloudflare, but there are definitely other players in the space:
- MaxCDN
- Amazon CloudFront
- Akamai Edge
- Fastly
- and many more
Which one should you use? Well if you are first starting out with CDNs (which you probably are since you are reading this), costs matter.
And Cloudflare offers an incredibly valuable service for free. No limits on bandwidth, no limits on the number of sites that can be protected, and it provides all the features you would need when just getting started.
MaxCDN is another popular provider that starts at $21 / month, but I honestly have been happy with my Cloudflare experience and have no need to shop around any more.
Cloudflare also integrates with a ton of other plugins and services. When you install popular caching or optimization plugins, you will likely see Cloudflare’s name somewhere in the settings.
For example, ShortPixel (a popular image optimization plugin) will connect directly into Cloudflare to make sure that the most optimized images are being served to your visitors around the world. Very useful!
What are the problems with CDNs like Cloudflare?
With every additional feature you add to your website, you are going to add a small amount of complexity.
When you add a CDN to the mix, you are essentially going to change where the internet is looking for your content. I have seen small reports of a short-term SEO dip when first enabling a CDN, but I wouldn’t let that really concern you. Online business is a long term game, and increasing the stability and speed of your site is an easy trade-off to make.
The other consideration is on general complexity. If you have a caching plugin like WPRocket or W3 Total Cache, you will now have 2 different places to clear your memory: Your plugin cache and your Cloudflare cache:
There is a useful WordPress plugin that attempts to keep your Cloudflare settings in sync with WordPress that you can also check out if you’d like.
How to install Cloudflare?
The video below will walk you step by step the entire setup process to put Cloudflare onto your site. Enjoy!
Timestamps for video:
- What is a CDN and why should you get one? (0:45)
- Sign up for free Cloudflare account (4:45)
- Enter your domain name to add to Cloudflare (5:05)
- Update your DNS name servers on your domain registrar (6:30)
- Explore Cloudflare (7:30)
- Warnings when you are first starting with Cloudflare (8:30)
Wrap-up
There you have it – everything you need to know to get started with Cloudflare. Now go improve your site speed, security, and overall awesomeness!
Your turn: Do you use a CDN on your site? Which one do you think is best? Leave a comment below and let me know!
Video Transcript
what if I was to tell you there is a
magic service that makes a website
faster more secure and saves you money
on your web hosting and it’s 100% free
well there is and in this video I’m
going to tell you all about content
delivery networks let’s go ahead and
dive in everybody John here from end can
mesh comm my goal is to help you find
the perfect tool for your next project
and in today’s video we are going to
upgrade one of my dummy sites one of the
sites I play around with by installing a
brand new CDN called CloudFlare but
let’s take a step back and talk about
what a CDN is why it’s important why it
saves you money and why you should
really be considering installing it on
every single one of your websites that
you own ok let’s go for it ok so first
things first what is CDN and what does
it stand for well a CDN is a content
delivery network and what that means is
that instead of having a single web host
a single computer on the cloud that
serves all your information to your
visitors of your website you’re able to
distribute all that information across
hundreds of data centers a hundreds of
computers across the world so that you
can intelligently route your website to
your visitor based on whatever is more
convenient and faster for them so that’s
a really awesome thing right there and
we’ll be talking about CloudFlare in
this video but there are many CDNs
available that you could sign up with
CloudFlare it has amazing support it has
amazing integrations with a bunch of
plugins and WordPress tools and hosts as
well it’s also 100% free for unlimited
bandwidth they make their money because
I have other upsells and you know
additional bells and whistles you can
tack onto the service but for beginning
entrepreneurs it really is not needed at
that stage in the game and if you pair
up a CloudFlare service with a caching
plug-in maybe an image optimization
plug-in you will be doing incredibly
well for your page speeds and your load
speeds so why am I talking about this
today well I ran a speed test report and
honestly this is a terrible result this
is one might play websites and it’s
partially because I upgraded to
Gutenberg and maybe I did that a little
too soon it really seems to have hurt my
performance but when you’re running
speed tests one of the things that they
recommend that everybody does on their
speed test is to use a content delivery
network
they also say that’s a medium priority
it’s not a high
priority like images or making fewer
external HTTP requests but it’s a pretty
important thing to do and that’s because
CDNs reduce the amount of ping or
latency that your visitors have to
experience before they can get your
content and what that basically means
it’s the time lag between when they hit
the enter button to find your website
and they actually make contact with the
server that has all your files and then
the the downloading can happen from
there so reducing ping is one of the big
things that a CDN can do for you another
thing that CD ends do is they help you
by protecting your site against kind of
malicious people you know bad bad people
that are out there and it does that
because hold on let me just find that
page real quick let’s go to cloud
players home products CDN and so here
you can kind of see a visualization of
that so this is how CloudFlare works and
basically your origin server may be
somewhere here in the middle of the
country but it’s going to distribute
that content all to all these other data
centers so that wherever your visitors
are coming from they’re always going to
get served the information from the
closest possible place which reduces
your ping there which is that 9
milliseconds here this is kind of the
standard version here whereas
everybody’s pinging that one web host
and this is going to do really two
things one is it going to slow down the
time they’re gonna get the information
they’re looking for but it’s also going
to you know greatly increase the number
of requests they’re being made from your
host server so if you are you paying by
the bit you know we all kind of have
caps on how much bandwidth we can have
with our web hosts what it’s happening
on this CloudFlare version is it’s
actually sending versions of your
website out to CloudFlare every now and
then but not that you know not so much
not with so much frequency that it
really hurts your overall bandwidth but
here every single time some is going
into your server is making another
request so that can add up to bandwidth
over time and I kind of shows that as
well and the other thing that is really
beneficial is some of the security
measures that are kept in place with C
DNS and essentially because so many
hosts use these content delivery
networks to protect their content these
CloudFlare is able to build up this huge
database of all the know knows all the
bad people that are out there and are
able to intelligently protect you from
them as they’re going along so that’s
enough benefit of the content delivery
networks I have more details in the blog
post I’ll link in the description below
but let’s go ahead and actually install
this guy into one of my new websites so
to do that we’re just going to go to
CloudFlare comm we’re going to sign up
for a new set up it’ll ask you to get
started and I’ll put in my email address
here and then you can if you want to get
their information or not you can click
there and create an account and that’s
pretty easy so no even need to go and
confirm your website at this point you
probably will at some point though we’ll
add our site and I’m gonna add
conversion sandbox
to this guy it’ll add that in and what
this is going to do at this point is go
and kind of explore kind of look to see
all the different things you have going
on with that website and it’s doing it
all on its own
no technical need for you at the moment
so that’s what it’s just saying it’s
gonna figure out automatically importing
all your DNS records so we’ll go ahead
and hit next here and then you select
your plan I’m gonna go with the free
plan on this one you can see it gives
you that global content delivery network
unmetered mitigation of DDoS this is one
of the security attacks that can happen
on your on your site and a free SSL as
well so if you look at what you get
additionally you know firewalls mobile
and image optimization so image
optimization is awesome but for $20 a
month you can get a awesome plugin to do
that on your website as well and then
additional page rules so not a whole lot
more to go to that $20 per month which
is why I recommend just get started with
the free plan and then grow it if you
need to will see one free website and
confirm okay so now it’s going to go and
find all the DNS records here and I yeah
so you got all these different records
here and if you are techy you can try to
you know adjust these or make it
whatever you needs to be I am NOT so I’m
gonna go ahead and continue let’s take a
look at it real quick I’ll say continue
and now it’s going to give you to all of
these name servers it’s gonna give you
two name servers this is the most
technical side of the entire process
so what you’re gonna want to do here is
get log in to where you registered your
domain not necessarily your web host so
you may use GoDaddy or Namecheap to
register your domains but then host your
websites with SiteGround at Bluehost or
one of those so you need to find your
domain registrar for this website for
whatever reason I have it a registered
at in motion hosting so I’m gonna go
here and go to point my domain and you
can see this is where my is pointing to
Bluehost I’m gonna remove those guys and
go back into CloudFlare and take Fiona
and put Fiona into my primary and take
Zeus and take the Zeus into my secondary
and I’ll submit those okay so now I see
that my request has been completed on my
domain registrar’s side let’s head back
to CloudFlare comm and say continue and
there’s some help here if you need help
getting started there but we’ll say
continue and boom so you are literally
done with the setup here so what’s going
to happen is it’s going to take some
time for the internet to realize you
made those changes and it’s going to
start populating CloudFlare and doing
all sorts of cool things so give it a
day or so normally doesn’t take a full
day but give it some time to propagate
but we’re gonna go ahead and just kind
of poke around here and what you’ll be
able to see which we can probably see in
my other accounts here but we won’t go
into that right now but you’ll be able
to see exactly how much CloudFlare is
saving you you’ll be able to see how
many requests are being made through
CloudFlare how many of them are cached
and how many are uncashed and uncashed
basically means it’s having to actually
hit your real web hosts but the cached
are ones that never that traffic never
even hits your web host it’s pretty
awesome you’ll see the bandwidth you’ve
saved by doing this and all sorts of
cool things and your you’ll even be able
to set up different speed settings so
minification all these different things
which you know I’m not the most
technical to be able to go through what
all these do but I will kind of give you
a word of warning here you have to be
careful if you have w3 total cache or WP
rocket or one of those caching plugins
or maybe even caching provided by your
host like I know site ground has their
site ground optimizer as well the more
time you stack the same thing on top of
each other so for instance it you’d
stack minification on
one tool and the minification on
CloudFlare you can start to get some
weird results so leave the default
settings on for at first make sure you
get CloudFlare running and see if your
websites are responding as it should and
then if you want to go and continue to
tweak to your heart’s content
do one setting at a time and just check
to make sure that it doesn’t do any
damage to your website okay a little
public service announcement that’s
lessons I’ve learned the hard way okay
so really we’re done at this point and
let me show you a website that is
running with CloudFlare as well let me
go back to here to the speed testing and
so income mesh is running on CloudFlare
and i also upgraded this guy to
wordpress 5.0 so i think my performance
is actually going to be not very
exciting I was getting right around one
second load times and then today they
started to get three second load time so
not thrilled with that but let’s see how
it looks today okay again
not a very exciting result 4.1 seconds
not thrilled with that but you can see
that once you’ve implemented CloudFlare
it will show you that you do have a
content delivery network and that will
increase some security increase a lot of
benefits for your website okay so I hope
that was helpful so kind of to wrap up
this quick video CloudFlare is a content
delivery network that will help speed up
your website by making sure it’s
delivering on the best hardware that’s
out there your website to your visitors
as quickly as possible
it’ll also increase your security by
being able to run all your traffic
through their very advanced filters to
make sure that only good people are
trying to access your website it will
also save you money by reducing the
number of queries and number of polls
that get sent over to your actual web
host by routing as much of their traffic
through their caching systems as they
can I’m John from in kamesh com if you
enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe
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out with more content like this and
leave a comment below do you use
CloudFlare or a different CDN let me
know what you think about CloudFlare and
what you think about this tutorial and
the style that I’m presenting I want to
make sure that I make this content as
relevant and as useful to you as
possible I’ll see you guys in the next
Clear, concise wrap up on CDN’s. Thank you
Thanks! CDN are powerful tools that should be part of every website!
Thanks for the heads up ???
Very welcome!!