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Cloudflare is an American company that offers various services, such as hosting, security services, and distributed domain name server (DNS) services.

Cloudflare’s mission is to help create and expand more desirable Internet services. These services are provided to users through content delivery networks (CDN) and security services. Today, industries, businesses, nonprofits, bloggers, and anyone who uses the Internet in any way.

It uses Cloudflare as a tool to provide users with speed and security. Cloudfeller increases Internet service requests by about 17%, responding to an average of 25 million HTTP requests per second.

How does Cloudflare work?

In the early years of the Internet, when a user wanted to download a website, their request was sent from a personal computer to a server. If the number of simultaneous requests exceeds a certain amount, the server malfunctions, and users’ access to the server hosting resources is lost.

This was an obstacle for hosts to provide content quickly, safely, and reliably. Cloudflare has made sites, applications, and blogs more secure and useful to overcome these barriers and facilitate users’ access to the content provided. This feature is implemented by a tool called an edge network, which speeds up access to information by shortening the communication path. In this network structure, data centers are installed in more than 200 locations worldwide, providing faster information access.

Using security protocols, Cloudflare protects Internet services against threatening actions such as DDoS attacks, malicious robots, and other security breaches. It also allows website owners to place their desired applications on the website without needing a dedicated developer.

If you are using web development services, you can develop the edge network in the Cloudflare space by running Javascript code and thus be as close as possible to the user. This prevents any delay in accessing information and provides a good user experience for the client.

Benefits of Cloudflare

It offers several operational features, including SSL and content distribution for various websites across the network. Previously, Internet service providers or any expert could easily access the site or application used by the user, even if the content was encrypted.

It offers services under the name DNS or 1.1.1.1 Free Service, which can be used by any Internet communication device. This service allows the user to view and inspect the data and content used by the service provider.

Disadvantages of Cloudflare

According to surveys of various industries (including filmmaking, music, book publishing, etc.), Cloudflare is used in approximately 40% of content thief websites. This service acts as a host between the user and the website support host and, with the help of its network of servers, steals the site’s content or makes changes to it. According to the Alexa Ranking Survey, out of 500 offending domains worldwide, 311 (63%) use Cloudflare services.

Cloudflare allows website owners and operators to use its services anonymously, which is very interesting for content-thief websites. If a website uses Cloudflare services, the IP address of the backup host will be replaced with a dedicated IP address defined by Cloudflare, and the previous address will no longer be recognizable.

How to install Cloudflare

Its Services is one of the most useful tools for web developers. This service has been added to WordPress as a plugin and offers several features, such as increasing website speed based on the CDN feature, increasing security based on the SSL feature, and a series of other useful features. This section presents the advantages of installing it for WordPress sites, how to install it on WordPress, and how to configure the official plugin for WordPress.

Benefits of installing Cloudflare for WordPress site

Here are some potential benefits of using Cloudflare for WordPress:

• CDN: Content delivery network (CDN), a Cloudflare service, increases the website’s speed by statically delivering content from a large network of global servers. It is the most common free CDN service.
• SSL: If your website has not already received an SSL certificate, you can use the HTTPS protocol for your WordPress website to see the green lock on your browser.
• DNS: It is a DNS service provider that speeds up your website. This service is based on amplifying the time to reach the first byte (TTFB).
• Security rules: Cloudflare allows you to define specific security rules for different parts of the site, such as the WordPress dashboard.
• DDoS Protection Protocol: Cloudflare is one of the most powerful tools against attacks. It also allows you to filter malicious traffic.
• Other benefits: It allows you to shrink structural code, compress Brotli, and implement other security measures.

How to install Cloudflare on WordPress

Before configuring the various options, you must connect your site to Cloudflare. It is essentially a reservation proxy service, meaning that:

For Cloudflare to be enabled, the domain name servers must first be managed so that these servers can use the CDN’s content and filter malicious actions (if Cloudflare security features are enabled). To do this, the domain name servers must first be changed to Cloudflare, which is the first step in the installation process. The steps are as follows:

1- Creating a free Cloudfeller application account

In the first step, go to https://dash.cloudflare.com/sign-up and register.

On the next page, enter the domain name of the WordPress site for which you want to use the Cloudflare feature, and click Add site.

Then, you will be asked to select one of the plans. You can choose the Free Plan to get started; this plan provides all the features needed by most WordPress sites.

2- Confirm DNS records

As soon as you select the plan, Cloudflare scans the DNS records on your site. If you do not know the details of this step, do not worry. All you need to confirm is to see the orange cloud icon in front of the original domain name you have already entered (no action is required if you see the orange cloud).

After viewing the orange cloud, click Continue.

3- Updating domain name servers to coordinate with Cloudflare

At this point, Cloudflare introduces you to a new set of DNSs that replace existing DNSs:

Domain name servers are the part where your domain name connects to your web host. When you switch to Cloudflare’s domain name servers, data traffic can drive to your website. The purpose of this is to filter out malicious traffic. It redirects normal traffic to your website under normal circumstances while filtering out malicious traffic before it reaches your site.

Note: Domain name servers take at least 24 hours to update, so do nothing until less than 24 hours have elapsed since the changes were made.

4- Configure some of the main settings

On the next screen, you can configure some basic settings for how it works.

If you want to use SSL / HTTPS, select the Full option. This method increases the traffic security on your website and allows you to see the green lock of the client browser.

Before choosing the Full option, ensure your WordPress site is up to date using HTTPS by updating its URLs.

After making the changes, click Done.

5- Confirm the completion of the connection process

When you click Done in the previous step, you will see a message asking you to complete installing the domain name servers.

Do not worry. This message may take several hours to complete, as it takes up to 24 hours for the domain name server configuration changes to take effect. Wait 30 minutes to an hour, then click the Re-check now button to see if the DNS has been updated. The following successful message should be displayed when the changes are applied. You simply installed Cloudflare for your site.

How to configure the official Cloudflare plugin for WordPress

Once you have connected your WordPress site to Cloudflare, you can manage some of its features from the dashboard. However, to help WordPress users, it has introduced its official WordPress plugin. This dedicated plugin has two features:

• Automatically configures some of the most important Cloudflare settings to optimize WordPress site performance.
• Allows you to manage some Cloudflare settings from the WordPress dashboard without the need to use the Cloudflare website

We recommend using the dedicated Cloudflare plugin for WordPress for these two reasons. So to do this, follow these steps:

1- Install Cloudflare plugin

The official plugin is listed at WordPress.org, so you can install it directly from the WordPress dashboard by searching for the keyword.

2- Connect to Cloudflare account

Once the plugin is activated, go to Settings → Cloudflare and click Sign in here.

Enter the email address for your account and the API key for your Cloudflare at the bottom.

Then click Save API Credentials.

How to access the API key in a Cloudflare account

To find the API key:

Go to the dashboard.

Click on the account icon in the upper right corner.

Select My Profile.

Click on the API Tokens bar.

Click View in front of the Global API Key (you will need to re-enter your password to view it)

Copy the number and add it to your plugin settings in the WordPress dashboard.

3- Optimizing Cloudflare settings

After activating the plugin, the Optimize Cloudflare for WordPress option will appear. Click Apply to automatically optimize Cloudflare settings for WordPress.

4- Development of page rules

The page rules are a series of additional settings that allow you to create more security. In fact, by defining a page rule, a series of actions are formulated that will be performed if the input URL follows a certain pattern. So, the condition of the page rules is that the orange cloud is displayed during the DNS record verification step. Page rules have two important functions:

• Only the rules of the page with the highest priority affect a request.
• The page rules in the Cloudflare dashboard are sorted in descending order of priority.

A page rule conforms to the following URL pattern:

<scheme>: // <hostname> <: port> / <path>? <query_string>

Example of a URL based on the template above:

https://www.example.com:443/image.png?parameter1=value1

Finally, it should be noted that page rules can be created, edited, or deleted at any time via the dashboard.

Conclusion

If you want to speed up your WordPress website and protect it from malicious attacks, Cloudflare is one of the best free services ever. Although installing it requires a series of changes to the domain name servers, these changes are made only once, and the benefits for your website will be permanent. Briefly, the process of using it for a WordPress website can be described as follows:

1- Create a Cloudflare account

2- Change the domain name servers to coordinate with the Cloudflare domain name servers

3- Installing the official plugin to optimize the configuration of the WordPress website