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Is cloudflare good at all?

OctoDev

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OctoDev Proficient

OctoDev

Posted
Posted

I've been using CloudFlare for years, CloudFlare PRO actually.

Only recently I removed it, and the website is way faster - even my avg user noticed the speed difference. Only downside is that there is no CDN, but if the site is faster that's all that matters.

 

Does CloudFlare really help you speed up your site, if you for example have the main site via direct - then "cdn.domain.tld" where you got all images, css etc via cloudflare? curious if that would also slow it down..

ASTRAPI Proficient

ASTRAPI

Posted
Posted

I am using it almost on all my servers ^_^

It is much faster with it.

Also it can help a lot with users from another region..

It is not normal to be slower with it.....

You may have some connections/requests ip limits and you not exclude Cloudflare's ip's and that can cause the slow down or a misconfiguration....

ASTRAPI Proficient

ASTRAPI

Posted
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Quote

I do not use. What do you think slowly you?

First of all you are serving all the static content from your server and that causes some resources like cpu,ram,network .....

If all your users located to Bulgaria that you have your server and you have optimized very well your server then ok maybe it can be a bit faster but in your case as Cloudflare has a datacenter in Sofia i will use them for sure just to take my load from my server.

Now if you have any visitor outside from Bulgaria and close to a Cloudflare datacenter then you know that it is a must to use....

 

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If our users are all from the same region, like the case of my site, not using Cloudflare is actually faster than using it. At least comparing it with the free version.

Yup that's possible but many forums don't have all users only from one country.

Pro version is helping a lot with mobiles and tablets and java files also ^_^

Adlago Mentor

Adlago

Posted
Posted

@ASTRAPI All my tests have servers in America. You saw above test from a server in Vancouver Canada. I tests with local here in Bulgaria servers do not do - will probably be even better.
Here test and Dulles US and in Dareboost test server. Or speaking generally - all visitors from the world in my site getting high speed only during my server.

https://www.webpagetest.org/result/160810_ZH_ZJ1/1/details/

https://www.dareboost.com/en/report/57ab3a180cf264ce947a8262

I tested sites that use cloudflare and CDN. I do not see good results. If a website is not optimized for use to the server where is hosted - no cloudlare nor CDN will make good speed indicators.

 

ASTRAPI Proficient

ASTRAPI

Posted
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@Adlago Your web page that you are benchmarking is 587kb only with only 25 requests...

What i am trying to say to you is that the numbers that you post for me to check doesn't reflect real performance.

I will need to write a long story to explain to you :(

Check this:

https://gtmetrix.com/reports/nophelet.com/iXlRnlpE

Very good pagespeed A 99% congrats ^_^

Now check this one:

https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/h8ESn/http://nophelet.com/

Performance grade C 79% not good :(

Now what?

Adlago Mentor

Adlago

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, ASTRAPI said:

@Adlago Your web page that you are benchmarking is 587kb only with only 25 requests...

What i am trying to say to you is that the numbers that you post for me to check doesn't reflect real performance.

I will need to write a long story to explain to you :(

Check this:

https://gtmetrix.com/reports/nophelet.com/iXlRnlpE

Very good pagespeed A 99% congrats ^_^

Now check this one:

https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/h8ESn/http://nophelet.com/

Performance grade C 79% not good :(

Now what?

Pingdom It is quite controversial test site. Explain why in my perfomance 79 and perfomance 84 IPS website, the IPS site is slower?

t1.png

PP. In my site requests are only 25 because I united all the images in 2 sprite.

Adlago Mentor

Adlago

Posted
Posted

@ASTRAPIExplain please - why IPS test site pingdom of Dallas there is a sharp drop in perfomance? This is a bad job of CDN...
Test my site - all servers pingdom has a fixed performance = 79  including test from Melbourne Australia :thumbsup:

t2.png

ASTRAPI Proficient

ASTRAPI

Posted
Posted

Benchmarking IPS forum index and your site is not the same ^_^

Ok so now you have 94% but not 99% as Gtmetrix.... now what?

You can see that it never ends.......

What a user care about is how much time a web page takes to load and not your pagespeed score.

In first place you had about 2 seconds and if you check Melbourne you need more than 4 seconds.

Here is where the CDN will help as about 50% of your page are static files and can served from the cdn from Melbourne and you just have to send only the dynamic data and that wil make the load much faster ^_^

Cloudflare has a datacenter in Melbourne also ^_^

That's what i am trying to explain !

Adlago Mentor

Adlago

Posted
Posted
33 minutes ago, ASTRAPI said:

Cloudflare has a datacenter in Melbourne also ^_^

That's what i am trying to explain !

Well, give you a site with a good job Cloudflare.

  • 3 weeks later...
OctoDev Proficient

OctoDev

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I've used PRO and Free. For some reason, it seems to slow down all javascript related content - even though I disabled Rocket Loader. Once I disabled it, my site seems way faster for all my users too. 

CloudFlare worked fine on FireFox, but not Chrome.

I've really not seen any slow downs, with cloudflare on other forum softwares than on IPS. It works fine on MyBB etc.. But when I used IPS Themes (Ehren's) it seemed to slow down the javascript he included a lot. Such as hes background changer, when navigating around in my forums it took the background 1-2s to load.. When I turned CF off completely, it loads instantly. 

m@t Enthusiast

m@t

Posted
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I would like to test also cloudflare, maybe it will help a little bit ;)

Is there any setting to apply in IPS4 system (ACP?)   

that cloudflare is working successfully

 

xtech Proficient

xtech

Posted
Posted

In my opinion, a CDN would only be valuable if your site is of "static resource"-heavy (lots of images, for example) to load, with users from all the world.

I've tried cloudflare for a couple of days three years ago and i didn't like it. It made my site quite slower. I use a dedicated server and as i have a neat site (a forum doesn't has lots of images) it's not worth the hassle setup a CDN, let alone paying for it. If you have a news site, with long pages and lots of static resources loading, that may make sense. Don't forget that you only have one server: the dynamic content is only generated by it. The CDN may ad unintended delays and sync issues that make it need to refresh its content, adding delay to the final site presentation.

There's a hype with the word 'cdn' that makes people think it will instantly speed up their sites, when that's not often the case. If you know your site, you are in position to decide whether a CDN would be of any good to it.

There are other hypes that come and go, such as the word "cloud" (which means nothing if you check its technological roots). Don't go for the hype, go for your reasoning.

m@t Enthusiast

m@t

Posted
Posted

@xtech

Thanks for your reply and all your ideas & view about this topic ;) 

My idea was regarding user from all over the world, as well i don't use IPS as forum (i had it in the past but cxl), which match in most points with your opinion - hopefully i see any good result - let's try, basic plan is free 

I completely agree with your point,  that it is just a hype and most user think that they have a small hosting package and wait after a cdn for the big surprise & power for no cent paying :cry:

m@t Enthusiast

m@t

Posted
Posted
41 minutes ago, EmpireKickass said:

My end is shocking but I tested two different website and the score is same from pingdom at 67 to 70 mark

i think it is not soooo easy to check with score, because this service provider makes sense for users fare away from the place, where your hoster/server is located 

Maybe interessting would be to find something fare away from the server place, with a local installed score checking tool next to a datacenter of  cloudflare 

As well you must have a lot of users from fare away and not only from your region where also the server is (maybe?) - if not, you can kick it into the dustbin & you should invest into a better hosting solution 

ptprog Rising Star

ptprog

Posted
Posted
On 8/31/2016 at 0:20 PM, xtech said:

In my opinion, a CDN would only be valuable if your site is of "static resource"-heavy (lots of images, for example) to load, with users from all the world.

I've tried cloudflare for a couple of days three years ago and i didn't like it. It made my site quite slower. I use a dedicated server and as i have a neat site (a forum doesn't has lots of images) it's not worth the hassle setup a CDN, let alone paying for it. If you have a news site, with long pages and lots of static resources loading, that may make sense. Don't forget that you only have one server: the dynamic content is only generated by it. The CDN may ad unintended delays and sync issues that make it need to refresh its content, adding delay to the final site presentation.

There's a hype with the word 'cdn' that makes people think it will instantly speed up their sites, when that's not often the case. If you know your site, you are in position to decide whether a CDN would be of any good to it.

There are other hypes that come and go, such as the word "cloud" (which means nothing if you check its technological roots). Don't go for the hype, go for your reasoning.

Currently with IPS you don't really need lots of images, you already have lots of JavaScript...

In my experience, if you have a significant shares of users from two different continents you are likely to benefit from a good CDN that has POPs close to your users.  Of course you need some tuning of cache headers, for example.  And you also need to avoid frequent changes to regenerate static JS and CSS files.

The problem with CloudFlare is that, at least the free service, is far from providing a good CDN for anything but sites with small traffic.

For those that want to know whether the CDN improves performance or not, Google Analytics collects some site speed data that you may use for comparisons.

Gary N Explorer

Gary N

Posted
Posted

I tried CloudFlare, for me it massively slowed down my website. I gave it 5 days. Even google webmaster tools un indexed my site as it reported it was unobtainable. I had problems viewing my pages or logging into admin acp. . Eventually I gave up on it and removed my domain from it. Within 5 minutes everything was back to norm. I had to re submit my sitemap to google . But no lasting effects for me . I used the free version through the cpanel in my site. Reading here a lot of people swear by it even the guy who originally recommended it to me .. but for me and my site for whatever reason, it worked terrible.

ASTRAPI Proficient

ASTRAPI

Posted
Posted

More than 80 servers on free account there and never got any issues.....

You may have an issue when you enable at once all optimizations but not performance issues....maybe some visual ones....but never had any performance issue and doesn't make sense to have a performance issue at all...

Maybe something is wrong on your configuration or cpanel or the cloudflare plugin...?

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