CloudFlare Overview
Welcome to our CloudFlare overview! On this page, we will explain what CloudFlare is, its advantages, and how to activate it on our services.
What is CloudFlare?
CloudFlare is a free content delivery network service. It stores your static content across multiple servers worldwide. For example, if your website is hosted on one our Dallas servers, and one of your visitors is from Australia, they will see the content from CloudFlare’s Australian location. It makes the static content of your website load quickly no matter where your visitors come from.
Why should I use CloudFlare?
Not only does CloudFlare speed up access to your website, it can also help reduce resource usage! Because the static content is loaded from CloudFlare servers, and not the one your website is actually hosted on, people visiting your website will not have as much impact on your resource usage. Your mileage may of course vary, depending on your website coding.
How do I sign up and activate CloudFlare?
Follow our quick tutorial on how to sign up and activate CloudFlare HERE
How do I access the full features of CloudFlare?
Upon logging into CloudFlare.Com with the user details of the account you wish to manage you can utilize a number of tools as part of the service. Click HERE to see how to view them.
How can I access my direct website without going through CloudFlare?
You may want to access your site directly if you’re making changes to your website and want to see the changes instantly. Because CloudFlare caches your static content, your changes may not appear on your main website right away. You can visit our quick guide on accessing your direct website HERE
How do I turn on development mode in CloudFlare?
If you are going to be making a lot of changes to your site, and do not wish to use the direct method from above you can learn how to use development mode instead by clicking HERE
How do I clear my CloudFlare cache?
If you want to clear your cache and in turn force CloudFlare to re-index your website. Learn how to do that HERE.
How can I disable CloudFlare?
If you no longer wish to use the service, or simply want to not utilize the service for a peroid of time, you can learn how to disable CloudFlare by clicking HERE
James March 13, 2014 at 12:56 am
Have had nothing but positive experiences with Cloudflare.
Tara June 15, 2015 at 3:40 pm
Dies it cost anything to use cloudfare?
James Davey June 16, 2015 at 5:26 am
Hello Tara,
Using the steps provided here to set this up through your hosting control panel, no.
Rob February 6, 2016 at 9:12 am
I am a reseller and usually use CMS for clients. I am moving solely to worpress and am looking to move all Joomla accounts over to this platform. My biggest battle on site5 is against the hackers and spammers. I just had a wordpress site hacked that I need to look at. (I kept this site always up to date with the latest wordpress version and pay to have AntiSpam by cleantalk installed).
Will this help against the hackers and spammers and by what technology means.
Rob
James Davey February 8, 2016 at 5:15 am
Hi Rob,
Not really, no CloudFlare of DNS related. We do offer a Malware Protection service, however, which is detailed at http://kb.site5.com/security/sucuri-malware-protection/ and can be ordered through Backstage.
Stavros February 9, 2016 at 2:35 am
A question was posed to Akeeba whether it had plans to develop a version of its superb Joomla security extension “Admin Tools Pro” for WordPress too.
Nicholas Dionysopoulos’ response explains the security weaknesses of WordPress and why Joomla is a much better environment to implement security measures against hacks.
The relative response is here https://www.akeebabackup.com/support/admin-tools/22582-admin-tools-pro-for-wordpress.html
Good luck.
Mary March 14, 2016 at 10:31 am
Hello,
How much does it cost? thank you
James Davey March 15, 2016 at 5:26 am
Hello Mary,
Setting up CloudFlare through your hosting control panel costs nothing. You can set up an account through CloudFlare directly, as well, but the free option we provide will work just fine.
Stavros Zacharias August 14, 2016 at 12:07 pm
I’ve setup a few websites on Cloudflare with excellent results. On one site which on its own was consuming 6GB of bandwidth daily, we’ve seen a 95% bandwidth savings!
My Question:
Do the Site5 servers log the original users’ IPs, or at the end of the month we Awstats will report the CloudFlare to be our most frequent visitor?
CloudFlare recommends installing the mod_cloudflare ( https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170916-Why-should-I-install-mod-cloudflare )
I’ve searched the Site5 Knowledgebase and the page http://kb.site5.com/apache/loaded-apache-modules/ refers among the loaded modules the “cloudflare_module”. Please confirm that this is the same module Cloudflare recommends installing.
Corey Mahon August 19, 2016 at 4:22 pm
Hi Stavros!
AWstats should show you with the visitors IP and not a CloudFlare IP so, you’ll still know where your visitors are connecting from. Also, the CloudFlare module would be the same as the one that is suggested by CloudFlare. If you run into any issues with your site and using CloudFlare, please don’t hesitate to open a ticket through your backstage panel. Our team will be glad to help out!