[Adam]

Has anyone used CloudFlare with MDDHosting's shared hosting? If you have, can you provide me with a URL so I can test the speed?

[MikeDVB]

Adam, on 27 February 2011 - 06:24 PM, said:

Has anyone used CloudFlare with MDDHosting's shared hosting? If you have, can you provide me with a URL so I can test the speed?

There are some using it, but I can't think of the domains off the top of my head. The idea behind CloudFlare is nice, if you give it a try let us know.

[Adam]

I have been using it on lrastart.org for a while now, and it's great. I am wondering how it will perform with your litespeed servers... will CloudFlares custom nginx web server limit the capabilities of litespeed? This is what I want to know, and anyone who uses CloudFlare with MDDHosting, please share your experiences

[MikeDVB]

All CloudFlare does is download copies of some of your site such as css, javascript, images, etc... and then serves them from geo-diverse locations instead of centrally from the server as near as I understand.

It really has nothing to do with the software on the web server itself or how it's configured. If it helps it helps, if it doesn't it doesn't, and has nothing to do with the base server itself unless I misunderstand the technology.

[Adam]

It works as a reverse proxy, so you have to go through CloudFlare's servers before it goes to MDDHosting. It also servers a cached copy of the site when the server goes down, protects the site against attacks, and provides extremely accurate analytics (along with the CDN feature). You point your domain to CloudFlare and you point CloudFlare to your host. That's how it works, if you didn't know already.

[MikeDVB]

Adam, on 27 February 2011 - 07:18 PM, said:

It works as a reverse proxy, so you have to go through CloudFlare's servers before it goes to MDDHosting. It also servers a cached copy of the site when the server goes down, protects the site against attacks, and provides extremely accurate analytics (along with the CDN feature). You point your domain to CloudFlare and you point CloudFlare to your host. That's how it works, if you didn't know already.

Yeah, I've read on it - it's just been a while.

[Brian Stevenson]

Adam, on 27 February 2011 - 06:24 PM, said:

Has anyone used CloudFlare with MDDHosting's shared hosting? If you have, can you provide me with a URL so I can test the speed?

I am on the Semi-Dedicated plan, using the Drupal 6.x content management system, enabled the "Boost" module for Drupal (creates an auto-expiring static version of the HTML to minimize PHP/SQL lag time), and using CloudFlare.

Let me know if you like the speed!
http://www.brianstevenson.com/

[Adam]

Brian Stevenson, on 11 March 2011 - 08:23 AM, said:

I am on the Semi-Dedicated plan, using the Drupal 6.x content management system, enabled the "Boost" module for Drupal (creates an auto-expiring static version of the HTML to minimize PHP/SQL lag time), and using CloudFlare.

Let me know if you like the speed!
http://www.brianstevenson.com/

Thanks for that. I use WordPress with W3 Total Cache plugin and Cloudflare:

http://lrastart.org/

And I do like the speed

[Brian Stevenson]

Adam, on 13 March 2011 - 12:54 PM, said:

Thanks for that. I use WordPress with W3 Total Cache plugin and Cloudflare:

http://lrastart.org/

And I do like the speed

Excellent response time on page loads! W3 Total Cache is doing a much better job than Boost.

[Adam]

Brian Stevenson, on 13 March 2011 - 01:58 PM, said:

Excellent response time on page loads! W3 Total Cache is doing a much better job than Boost.

Especially with how many images and how large my page file is, it's important that I have a some good caching, a fast and reliable server, and CloudFlare also helps

[Bohemia]

Adam, on 13 March 2011 - 03:14 PM, said:

Especially with how many images and how large my page file is, it's important that I have a some good caching, a fast and reliable server, and CloudFlare also helps

May be a belated reply, but I use CloudFlare as well on http://tangobohemia.com
(Wordpress, W3 Total Cache)

Started with CF about 6 months ago, liked the performance, except these days - but I think it is because of the hosting upgrades/downgrades/reboots?

[MikeDVB]

If you're using CloudFlare then you can't really accurately judge the performance of the server. If you want to know whether it's CloudFlare or the server itself that isn't up to par, you would need to turn CloudFlare off. If things still aren't running as good as you'd like it'd be the server but if things pick up in speed it's CloudFlare.

We've had a few customers who feel CloudFlare is amazing and others who said it slowed things down/caused issues so it could go either way.

[Brian Stevenson]

Bohemia, on 31 March 2011 - 07:03 PM, said:

May be a belated reply, but I use CloudFlare as well on http://tangobohemia.com
(Wordpress, W3 Total Cache)

Started with CF about 6 months ago, liked the performance, except these days - but I think it is because of the hosting upgrades/downgrades/reboots?

When we were dealing with the I/O issues, I could definitely feel the sluggishness even through CloudFlare. The reason is that CF's Content Delivery Network doesn't deliver cached HTML when your site is operational. CloudFlare's nginx web server does an immediate pass-thru of MDDHosting's HTML response to your browser.

If MDDH is getting pegged with a DDOS, or is experiencing a technical issue that causes a performance hit, you'll feel it. CloudFlare actually thought my site was offline at the peak of the issues were were having in March, so the "Always Online" feature occasionally kicked in and a cached version of my site was delivered instead.

A good way to get a sense of the bottleneck is to visit the CloudFlare-optimized version of your site, then visit your site directly (e.g. direct.yourdomain.com or whatever you setup in CF's DNS). Third party tools like YSlow can help pinpoint the problem. If static files like javascript, css, and image files are taking forever to load on the Cloudflare-Optimized version, it's a cloudflare issue. Check out their system status page for more info: http://www.cloudflar...tem-status.html

Peace,
Brian

[Bohemia]

Mike - I certainly understand about disabling CF to determine where the problem lies and want to wait a few days, as sometimes things get normal "by themselves".

Brian - thanks for the info. Not sure I could use direct.mysite..., as I believe it is used for FTP type of an access. I did not find a shortcut to bypass CF other than disabling it, but decided to wait a bit longer. Although I saw my bounce rate went up by about 20% while it is being slow.

CF status seems just fine. BTW, I had the same thing with CF showing a cached version of my site during the server issues period.