I recently experienced some performance issues on this blog and changed the template to more of a basic look and feel. By doing so I reduced the number of requests for all the pages on my blog, as well as the number of bytes that was transferred. In an effort to increase the performance even further, I signed up with an online free service.
While I was on Twitter several months ago I noticed a tweet from Michael Aulia from Craving Tech regarding a service he just started using called CloudFlare. This site talks about increasing a web site’s performance while also making the site safer. I have been using their service over the past few months, and so far I have been impressed.
CloudFlare – Increasing Performance
First of all let me mention that you can use CloudFlare’s service for free. There are two options available: free and Pro. The Pro version has some additional benefits for $20/month, but for the average blog or web site owner, the free version can handle everything you need.
Next CloudFlare doesn’t require you to install anything on your server, web site or blog. It does require you to change the DNS entries for your site to point to their server instead of your host. They provide instructions on how to set it up, or can do it for you. Once it is setup, you can start realizing the benefits of the service.
On the performance side, CloudFlare has four servers around the world where it caches the static elements of your site, such as images, Javascript, CSS, etc. When someone accesses your site, the static elements of your pages are sent to your visitor from the nearest server. This has two benefits: less load on your host server, and possible faster response for your visitor.
CloudFlare - Performance Statistics.
(Click to enlarge)
From the above image you can see that almost 5 GB in the last 30 days was sent from the CloudFlare’s servers instead of my host. This 5 GB was the static elements of my blog.
You may also notice the page load time decrease considerably (to the point where I can’t read the value), which is a huge benefit for my visitors.
Another performance aspect is that of caching. If my blog were to go down, such as when I update the code and cause my blog to not load, CloudFlare will send the cached version of my blog to my visitors with a message at the top. This means that my visitors will always see the information that they are looking for, even when my blog goes offline.
For those that are wondering, using the service doesn’t impact any analytics scripts (Google, Statcounter, etc.) that you are currently using on your site, nor does it impact any caching plugins for WordPress, I am currently using W3 Total Cache without any problems.
So far I haven’t ad any issues with the service, and would recommend that anyone looking for performance increase to check them out.
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on January 24, 2011 at 12:13 am
Hi Paul,
I’m still a little foggy as to how this works. Are CloudFlare servers simply faster than, say, my host servers? I guess I just don’t understand why downloading from their server works advantageously over downloading from my host server. I see the numbers and they look impressive (at least to gain my interest), but I can’t say I’m sold on the process.
on January 24, 2011 at 8:36 am
CloudFlare has numerous servers around the world, but your host usually has your server located in one location. When a visitor accesses your site/blog, they will request your site/blog from a CloudFlare server that is closest to them. This helps to distribute the load for you site among several servers.
Whether they are faster? I can’t really say but it seemed to have impacted my blog. My static content, such as images, are now served by CloudFlare and not my host. This also has the advantage of reducing the load of my host, thereby, it may also make my site faster since there is less load on my host.
As with anything performance related, test, test, test.
on January 24, 2011 at 10:51 am
Sounds good, I might just give it a try. Thanks Paul!
on January 24, 2011 at 5:40 am
Great information on Cloudflare
thanks for sharing it
on January 24, 2011 at 11:13 pm
Thanks for mentioning me
Glad that you find the service useful too. Hope they can maintain the same quality of service, speed, and the free cost
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Twitter: michaelaulia
on January 26, 2011 at 8:17 am
It sounds like a CDN service for me. Yeah, a CDN Service can surely increase our site load time while also save the resources.
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on January 26, 2011 at 11:18 am
It does sound like a CDN – a free CDN. The website doesn’t mention that they are a CDN, but it is very similar.
on January 26, 2011 at 8:12 pm
Hi Paul,
We like to say we act similar to a CDN, without actually requiring a ton of work like a CDN (many CDNs take a lot of configuration work).
Hi Stephen,
“Are CloudFlare servers simply faster than, say, my host servers? ”
The other benefit is that we help filter junk traffic (spammers, attackers, bad bots, etc.) so this helps speed things up on your site and save on bandwidth.
More than happy to answer any additional questions about CloudFlare (I’m pretty easy to find).
on January 26, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Thanks Damon. I appreciate you stopping by with some more information about CloudFlare.
on January 26, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Glad to help. I would recommend that other folks read some of the information on our blog (Top Tips After Installing CloudFlare, etc.) to minimize some areas of potential confusion as well. I’m just not posting the link because I don’t want to be looked at as a link spammer
on January 26, 2011 at 9:05 pm
No problem. You could post the link, I trust you’re not a spammer.
Anyways, for those interested here is the link: CloudFlare Blog.
on January 31, 2011 at 4:02 pm
As skeptical as I may sound to use this, you guys sold me to the point of signing up last night. The fact that someone like Damon would go around looking for reviews of his software to simply answer questions and clarify information is very telling to me and makes me believe it’s at least worth a shot. Very interested to see how it works out. Thanks!
on January 31, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Hi Stephen,
Great! Please do let me know if you have any questions.
on January 31, 2011 at 5:57 pm
Certainly will. Very impressed by your dedication. Keep up the good work!
on May 11, 2011 at 6:47 pm
Well, I’m giving CloudFlare a try… what I like most about it is its price, of course
I’ve been doing some tests with Apache’s Benchmark, which I’m aware is not a “real” testing suite, but just a simple test to give an overall idea on performance. I’m testing it with two sites (both WordPress), one on DreamHost, the other on GoDaddy; both suffer from an incredible lag which I have often attributed to clumsy database connections and extreme JavaScript inclusion from too many sources. But… being shared hosts (not even virtual hosts), I cannot expect miracles.
Even with W3 Total Cache activated with the CloudFlare settings, I don’t see a massive improvement. It depends a bit from where the tests are made, of course; I have a few servers across the US and others in Europe. And, of course, my slow ADSL connection at home is also a valid testbed. While visually there seems to be more responsiveness, the tests don’t measure such a huge difference. I’ll continue to make more tests — the more tests, the more CloudFlare will hopefully cache — and see if there are improvements over time, and keep an eye on those statistics.
Nevertheless, at least I’ll be happy to use the free service for at least one reason: if my sites go down, CloudFlare will continue to serve pages out of its cache. That should make a huge difference during very busy hours!
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on May 12, 2011 at 8:11 am
I noticed that the latest version of W3 Total Cache has support for CloudFlare. I haven’t looked at those settings yet, but I definitely will in the future.
The one thing you can check is to see if the amount of data sent from your host decreases now that you are using CloudFlare. You host should have a method of checking the amount of data transferred for a specific month and see if it has decreased since using CloudFlare.
on July 6, 2011 at 8:58 am
Hi Paul and thank you for sharing your experience with CloudFlare. I too used it for a while and had great results as far as speed goes. You may and your readers/commenters be interested to know that there is a similar service called Incapsula, which is a bit more geared towards security and a bit less towards performance, but in my testing I found it to more or less equal to CloudFlare speedwise, so it may be worth trying to see which one performs best:
http://www.husdal.com/2011/07/01/incapsula-versus-cloudflare/
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on July 6, 2011 at 10:40 am
Hi Jan,
I haven’t heard of Incapsula, but I may have a look at what they offer. I haven’t experienced issues with CloudFlare, but have seen others that have had issues. I know that CloudFlare is new, so they will have their growing pains, but I may still look at Incapsula as I like to have a comparison product.
on December 26, 2011 at 12:28 am
HI Paul,
After reading your article, I started using this service and also installed Wp Super Cache plugin. I have seen great improvement in my site loading time since then. But I am a little confused- what improved the site loading time- Cloud Flare or Super Cache plugin? My understanding is that the primary functionality of both Cloud Flare and the Super Cache Plugin is to make websites load faster, so how are the two different from each other? Does one need both of these, or any one will do? Or, am I wrong in my assumption?
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