What is Cloudflare, how does it work and what is it for?

Cloudflare — a universal tool for all problems or a "free cheese"? We tell you about the service, how it speeds up and protects websites, what to pay attention to before installation, and how to connect it to the site and configure it.

It seems that organizing DNS record management, connecting an SSL certificate, protecting a site from DDoS attacks, setting a captcha, restricting access to a site by IP address or region is not so easy. But all these are the basic functions of just one service — Cloudflare.

We'll tell you what Cloudflare is, the on page seo service advantages of this tool and its disadvantages (yes, there are some), as well as how to install and configure it.

What is Cloudflare and how does it work?
Cloudflare is a network of servers around the world. Clients connect their sites to it to speed up loading and protect against attacks. In addition, the service helps manage DNS records on the domain, install an SSL certificate, set up redirection to HTTPS, and much more.

The most basic Cloudflare service package is free, and there are also several paid packages that differ in the level of protection and acceleration. Most users of the service choose the free plan: it is enough to meet basic needs.

Websites connected to Cloudflare load faster due to CDN (Content Delivery Network) technology. Static files are cached and stored on servers located around the world. When a visitor goes to such a site, they receive static files from the DNS server closest to them, so data loading occurs faster. Incoming traffic also goes through Cloudflare and is filtered: suspicious traffic is blocked, and safe traffic is redirected to your web resource.

Is Cloudflare Worth Using?
Cloudflare offers many necessary tools for free, we will consider them in more detail later in the article. This includes DDoS protection with flexible settings, and loading acceleration, and CDN connection, which saves traffic, and the ability to create your own rules for some pages.

But we also need to remember that all the advantages for website owners can turn into disadvantages for ordinary users. But ultimately, it is the users who determine the income that the website will bring, and user behavior affects the ranking in search engine results.

If Cloudflare decides that the user's IP address is suspicious, it will either be blocked or the user will regularly encounter a requirement to pass a captcha, and since about a third of all sites are currently connected to Cloudflare, it will essentially be cut off from a large part of the Internet. But at the same time, the vast majority of users go online with a dynamic IP; that is, the hypothetical user1 may have nothing to do with the suspicious traffic that came from his IP address last week (or even yesterday or a few hours ago), because then this IP belonged to the hypothetical user2. However, when blocking by IP, everyone to whom the provider assigns this address will be "in the crossfire".
It is also important to remember that Cloudflare is a virtual monopolist in its field, which means that a breakdown on its side will affect the entire global Internet infrastructure. This already happened several years ago, when all resources connected to the service were unavailable due to a Cloudflare error. Moreover, those who did not use Cloudflare directly (due to third-party APIs) also had problems. The failure affected not only websites, but also games, mobile applications, and terminals. At the same time, clients could not redirect traffic around Cloudflare servers, since the control panel was also blocked.

Cloudflare has access to all data stored on customer sites, and in unencrypted form. The Cloudflare server decrypts the data received from your site, re-encrypts it with its certificate, and then transmits it to visitors. The scheme works even if you have your own SSL certificate. This in itself goes against the purpose of installing SSL - encrypting data between the client and the server without decrypting it during transmission. If Cloudflare servers are hacked, all confidential information will become available to intruders. There are known cases when, due to an error, random data, including personal data, appeared on the pages of the service's clients.
How to connect Cloudflare
Let's go to the Cloudflare website and click Sign up on the top right.
The registration form will open. Enter your e-mail and password, then click Create Account:
Cloudflare Registration Form
In the next window, specify the domain name of the site that connects to Cloudflare. Click Add site:
Website Domain Name in Cloudflare
Let's choose a tariff. For example, we'll connect to Free. Click "Continue":
Cloudflare Tariff
After connecting the tariff, the service will start scanning the DNS zones of your domain and create copies of all DNS records of the domain and subdomains. Check the list, if any record is missing, add it manually. After that, click "Continue".
Copies of all DNS records for the domain and subdomains
Cloudflare will then give us the DNS server names that need to be set up for the domain with the domain name registrar company.
DNS server names
Once your DNS servers are set up and your domain is redirected to Cloudflare, your control panel will have sections for managing available Cloudflare services.
Sections for working with available Cloudflare services
Please note that for a few days after connecting, some traffic will be directed through old DNS servers, meaning Cloudflare will not filter all requests.

Next, let's look at how to use the most popular Cloudflare tools: caching, DNS, SSL/TLS, Firewall, and Page Rules.

How to clear cache
Cloudflare creates a cache by default, so you need to clear it every time you make changes to your site. If you don’t, your visitors will continue to see old content for some time. To clear the cache, go to the Caching section, Configuration tab. To clear the cache selectively, click Custom Purge, and for a complete purge, click Purge Everything.

Working with DNS records
The DNS section contains a list of all DNS records on Cloudflare's servers that relate to your domain.

If you need to add a new record, click the +Add record button above the list table. In the DNS record creation form:

select its type (A, AAAA, CNAME, MX or TXT);
specify the name (Name) — the host on the domain for which the record is being created. Specify the @ symbol if the record is being created for the main domain. If for a subdomain, specify only its name;
if the record type is A, specify the IP address - IPv4 address;
TTL — the lifetime of the DNS record on the visitor's side, usually set to Auto;
Proxy status — Cloudflare proxy status. The Proxied value indicates that requests will be routed through Cloudflare. According to the DNS Only value, requests will bypass Cloudflare, and accordingly, the main functions — CDN, SSL, DDoS protection — will not work for this record.
To change or delete a DNS record, click Edit. You can then rewrite the values in the form fields, and a Delete button will appear at the bottom of the page — click it to delete.

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