Did you know that there is a way that you can improve your site security and improve your page speed and its FREE!

I am talking about the service provided by CloudFlare. This is a CDN (Content Delivery Network) and distributed DNS (Domain Name Server) service offering both free and paid services. The paid service is aimed more at the corporate user and the free service will be fine for most users.

So what does it do? Well basically it acts as a proxy server standing between your visitors and your hosting service. You change the DNS servers associated with your domain name to the CloudFlare name servers and all requests for your pages are routed to them. CloudFlare cache your static content so minimizing the need for calls to your host.

This gives you the following benefits:

• Improved Page Speed of Loading: CloudFlare has servers located throughout the world so your cached pages are delivered from the nearest server. The caching results in increased page speed and for visitors who are some way from your host’s servers the increase can be very significant. It is well known that web site visitors are not patient and many will not wait for a slow site to load. Using CloudFlare your site can be fast throughout the world (CloudFlare claim that on average sites load twice as fast).
• Protection Against Peaks: If your site gets a sudden surge of traffic (e.g. you get a post featured on the front page of a site like Digg or Stumbleupon) this will easily be handled by the CloudFlare network without affecting your host.
• Protection Against Downtime: CloudFlare can continue to serve the cached pages even if your host takes their server down for maintenance.
• Cheaper Hosting: As CloudFlare takes much of the load you can manage with a cheaper hosting service than you might otherwise need.
• Improved Site Security: CloudFlare uses its own, and third party, data to identify threats and stop them getting to your site.
• Spam Reduction: CloudFlare uses third party data to reduce the number of spam comments made on sites on its network.
• Spots Infected Computers Trying To Access Your Site: CloudFlare alerts visitors that have they have an infected computer which requires action by them. They must enter a CAPTCHA to continue to your site.
• Additional Statistics: You can now find out more about search engine bots visiting your site and threats to your site that have been averted.

So are there any disadvantages? Only minor ones:

• As CloudFlare reduces the calls to your host this means that the statistics taken from your web server will not be very meaningful. However, web based statistical programs are not affected. CloudFlare actually is very easy to configure for Google Analytics.
• Because CloudFlare caches static content any changes you make to this will not be seen by your visitors straightaway, although you can put CloudFlare into development mode to avoid this.
• CloudFlare’s basic mode cannot handle SSL certificates. If your site uses these then that part of the site will need to be on a separate sub-domain which is served directly from your host.

Does CloudFlare Work With Any Host?
It should work with any host but CloudFlare is partnered with HostGator and is an option within the HostGator Control Panel. This makes the setup easier.

What If I Am Using WordPress?
CloudFlare has a plugin for WordPress which ensures that everything works smoothly and simplifies the set-up for WordPress sites.

Conclusion
The CloudFlare service is good and we are happy to recommend it. It improves site security, increases page speed and doesn’t cost anything – what is there to dislike?

If you are using HostGator and WordPress you will find it very easy to set-up.