As a website owner, you will definitely do anything for the security and speed of your website. The simple way to do this is to install Cloudflare on your website.
What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is a company that provides CDN services, security services and speed optimization for websites. When someone visits a website that uses Cloudflare's services, the content request is forwarded to one of the hundreds of servers scattered around the world.
By using Cloudflare, websites can be faster and more secure, because content requests will be forwarded to the nearest server and there is no need to go through the main server which may be far away from visitors.
In addition, Cloudflare can protect the website from malicious activity or attacks that impact the website.
Suppose that the website is your home, so that the house is protected from crime and not just anyone enters the house, the solution is to put up a fence around the house or to make it safer, add a security guard at the entrance to the house, this fence and security guard are called with Cloudflare if on the website, which is in charge of guarding and protecting against malicious actions.
History of Cloudflare
Cloudflare is a technology company founded in 2009 by Matthew Prince, Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn. The company was originally a CDN (Content Delivery Network) service to accelerate the delivery of web content to users around the world.
Cloudflare began offering web security services such as protection against DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) security in 2010. In the same year, the company also began offering DNS (Domain Name System) provisioning services. which is safe and fast.
Over the years, Cloudflare has continued to grow and develop, and is currently one of the largest CDN companies in the world with over 20 million websites registered on its platform. Cloudflare has been an industry leader in providing security and performance optimization services for websites, and is constantly developing new features to meet the needs of its customers.
How Cloudflare works on websites
The way Cloudflare works is to protect and speed up your website, provided that your website has been registered and is on the Cloudflare server. All visitors who will access your website will be analyzed first by Cloudflare.
Cloudflare will block any attempts that harm the health of your website. Apart from that, Cloudflare also limits bandwidth-hungry bots and crawlers. The results obtained from this effort affect the security and speed of the website.
Advantages of Cloudflare
Cloudflare offers a variety of features that can help increase the speed and security of your website, here are some of the features that are the strengths :
1. Optimal website speed
Cloudflare provides advanced caching services to speed up your website loading time. In addition, Cloudflare also provides optimization technologies such as CSS, JavaScript and HTML minification, as well as image compression to increase website speed.
2. Monitor malicious actions on websites
Cloudflare provides various security features to protect your website from DDoS attacks, spam, and malware.
Cloudflare also features strong user authentication, unknown IP blocking, as well as Web Application Firewall (WAF) security features that can thwart attacks that could potentially damage your website.
3. CDN Services
Content Delivery Network (CDN) from Cloudflare can deliver content such as web pages, images, videos, and other files to the server closest to the visitor, so that the visitor can access the content more quickly.
By using a CDN, your website content will be stored on servers that are spread all over the world, so not all visits to your website will use up the bandwidth of the main server. This can help save on bandwidth costs and minimize the risk of downtime on your main server.
4. DNS service
Cloudflare provides a fast and reliable DNS service, which allows you to easily manage domains and IP addresses.
Cloudflare's DNS service also has malware and phishing blocking features to protect your website from potentially damaging attacks.
5. Free SSL encryption
Sophisticated SSL encryption is also provided by Cloudflare to protect data sent through your website.
6. Reduce server workload
Cloudflare is able to reduce server resource usage such as CPU on hosting. If there is a drastic increase in visitors, the server load remains stable and secure.
7. Web traffic analysis
Cloudflare provides a website traffic analysis tool that can be used to monitor and track website traffic, as well as identify website speed issues.
Cloudflare provides a report on who accessed your website. This report displays visitors in the form of humans, search engine robots, and attackers.
8. Easy installation of Cloudflare
Cloudflare is easy to pair with various platforms, such as WordPress, Joomla, and Magento, so you can easily manage Cloudflare services through the platform you use.
9. Railguns
This feature is able to increase the speed of website traffic to the origin server, especially for dynamic content, this is because not all website pages are cached.
However, this feature is a paid feature, and configuration on the hosting is required before using it.
10. Always Online
When your website server is having problems, visitors can still access your website. Cloudflare will serve up a copy of the web page from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine until your web server reconnects.
11. Cloudflare Workers
Cloudflare Workers allow developers to write JavaScript code that can be embedded on websites without the need to change the original code of the website. This makes it easy to add additional features or modify the website without having to make permanent changes.
On the Blogger.com platform, it can also enable PWA (Progressive Web App) features and other powerfull features to be implemented on Blogger with the help of Cloudflare Workers. For more details, we write in the following link:
Disadvantages of Cloudflare
Some of the drawbacks of Cloudflare that might need to be considered are :
1. Dependability with Cloudflare
When using Cloudflare, your website depends on the services provided by Cloudflare. If there is a problem with the Cloudflare service, your website may not be accessible to users.
As happened on June 21, 2022, Cloudflare experienced an interruption on their network which ultimately caused a number of websites around the world that use Cloudflare services to be inaccessible, including Discord, Canva, Amazon Web Services, Patreon, Skype, Twitch, Gitlab, League of Legend, Valorant, and so on.
2. Latency
Although Cloudflare aims to reduce latency by serving content from a nearby server, there may be higher latency if Cloudflare's server location is far from the user.
3. Compatibility
Some website plugins or features may not be compatible with Cloudflare, which may cause website problems.
4. Complicated configuration
Configuring Cloudflare can be a little tricky for those who are not familiar with CDNs and web security.
5. Privacy
Cloudflare stores some information about your website traffic. While Cloudflare guarantees that this information will not be sold or shared with third parties, there are privacy concerns for those who are concerned about this matter.
Despite this, Cloudflare is still one of the popular CDN and web security services that are widely used by websites worldwide. The advantages offered by Cloudflare, such as high speed, good security, and other features, are often considered more important than these disadvantages.
When should I use Cloudflare?
You can use Cloudflare if :
High traffic websites : Cloudflare can help reduce the load on your main server by storing website content on servers around the world. This can help increase website speed and prevent downtime on the main server.
Want to improve website security : Cloudflare offers security features such as DDoS protection, SSL encryption, and malware blocking that can help protect your website from cyber attacks.
Want to increase website speed : By using a CDN, your website content will be provided to users from the closest server to their location, thereby increasing the speed of website loading time.
Pricing of Cloudflare services
Although Cloudflare can be installed for free on the website, not all features on Cloudflare are found in the free version, so to get superior features, we have to spend some money.
Based on the official Cloudflare website, the price for Cloudflare application services (for website security and performance) provides the following options:
Free ($0/month) : for personal or hobby websites.
Pro ($20/month) : for professional websites.
Business ($200/month) : for small businesses that operate online.
Enterprise (special price): for important applications that are the core of your business.
For more details about Cloudflare prices, you can visit the official website Cloudflare.
Conclusion
Cloudflare is one of the most popular website security and optimization service providers among internet users. By using Cloudflare, your website can be protected from cyber attacks, as well as speed up website loading by using the caching feature provided.
In addition, Cloudflare also provides many useful additional features, such as DDoS protection, unwanted IP blocking, and traffic monitoring to find out the traffic that enters your website.
Cloudflare is quite easy to use, and is available in various packages that can be tailored to the needs of the website. If you are interested in using Cloudflare's services, you can visit the official website to find out more about the features provided, as well as the prices offered.
Hopefully the information we convey is useful, see you in the next article.