Optimized Cloudflare Hosting - Boost Your Site With Cloudflare

Cloudflare Frequently Asked Questions

What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is a website optimization technology which uses a number of techniques to improve your site performance. By routing your traffic through their global network, Cloudflare will inspect and filter out malicious requests, unwanted traffic, and other resource draining requests. In addition to filtering traffic, Cloudflare also provides caching for static content through their CDN style setup.
Is Cloudflare free if I have hosting with Hawk Host?
Yes, Hawk Host is currently a Cloudflare partner and the service is offered for free through our shared hosting plans. Cloudflare offers a premium service you can find here. Cloudflare Pro costs $20 per month, and Cloudflare Business costs $200 per month. You can manage both Free, Pro, and Business services from the same account.
Will it make my website faster?
It has potential to speed up your website for a number of reasons. Cloudflare caches static content from your site and distributes it across their CDN. Cloudflare also inspects all traffic coming into your site and filters out malicious and unwanted traffic, reducing the number of hits to yours site and reducing your overall resource demand.
What are some benefits of using Cloudflare?
According to Cloudflares website, an average website will see a 30% increase in speed, use 60% less bandwidth and serve 65% fewer requests when using Cloudflare. In addition to the speed increases, your site will also be protected by basic security features such as hotlinking protection, the ability to block traffic by IP or country, email harvesting protection, and a number of other features. Along with the security and speed, you will also be provided detailed statistics about your traffic, updated every 24 hours. You can read more about all the features on the free plan on the Cloudflare website.
Is Cloudflare easy to activate on my hosting account?
In order to activate Cloudflare for your domains, all you need to do is login to cPanel and look for the Cloudflare icon. You'll be able to create an account, get familiar with the service, make your site Cloudflare enabled, and modify your security settings right through cPanel. We even have a knowledgebase article on getting your account setup. You can read that article by clicking here.
Where can I read more about Cloudflare and get help with their services?
Cloudflare has an extensive support network setup. Their help page is available at https://www.cloudflare.com/help.html which provides an FAQ, knowledgebase, and Wiki. In addition to the existing support resources, they also provide support via email and a contact form found on their website. To learn more about Cloudflare as a company, their About Us section found on their website provides a good resource for information.
Can I use a Cloudflare Pro account with Hawk Host?
Of course! Both the free and Pro plans are fully compatible with our shared hosting accounts. It is also possible to host free and Pro sites from the same account.
Where are Cloudflares datacenters located? Will my content be served from a server near me?
Will my content be served from a server near me? Cloudflare has 100+ data centers worldwide; the locations of each of their data centers can be found here.
Does CloudFlare support SSL? How can I use it on my site?
Cloudflare fully supports the use of SSL with your website. If SSL is installed on a subdomain, you can continue using it on a free account and just make note that it's an SSL subdomain within your Cloudflare account dashboard. If the SSL is installed into your primary domain (not a subdomain), then you'll need to upgrade to a Cloudflare Pro account. The cost is $20 per month. You can use both free and Pro services under the same account. More information about Cloudflare and SSL can be found here.
Does Cloudflare provide any other services?
In addition to their web performance services, Cloudflare has a whole suite of other services all catered to improve, optimize, and secure your website. A full overview can be found here, these services include a CDN, site optimizers, security tools and scans, and increased traffic/visitor analytics. CloudFlare also provides a service called Cloudflare Apps. This program allows for one click installations of some of the most popular web apps available today, including products by Google, Globalsign and Pingdom.
- Wordpress Plugin - The Cloudflare WP plugin will display your visitors real IP, and not the IP of the Cloudflare proxy. This plugin will also run optimizations on your database (it is not a replacement for caching plugins), and will also let you report spam users to Cloudflare right through your blog.
- Joomla Extension - This extension for Joomla will restore your visitors original IP address, and not report the IP as one of Cloudflares proxies. Currently the plugin does not provide any other benefits or optimizations.
- Drupal Extension - This Drupal extension for Cloudflare will restore your visitors original IP and not report their IP as one of Cloudflares. Currently this plugin does not provide any other features or optimizations.
- Rocket Loader - Rocker Loader is a general-purpose asynchronous JavaScript loader with a lightweight browser. This service automatically optimizes your pages to minimize your network connections and prevent third party services from slowing down your site.
- CSS & JavaScript Bundling - In addition to Cloudflares custom developed AutoMinify feature, this service will bundle your JS & CSS requests into a single request, reducing the amount of active network connections.
The team behind Cloudflare is also responsible for Project Honey Pot, a webservice to identify spammers and spam bots which scrape data from your site.

What People Say ?

I have had websites with many hosting companies over many years - pretty much since the Internet was all shiny and new. I have been hosted by both big-name companies and smaller ones. But I have never been as satisfied with a hosting company as I am with Hawk Host. In my opinion, Hawk Host is the absolute best hosting company in existence. Their package prices are extremely reasonable, and I've never had any problems with downtime. Hawk Host is a friendly, professional company that delivers first-rate service. To everyone at Hawk Host: thank you so much for being so awesome!

WhitneyWebsite Owner

When I first started searching the internet for a reliable host, I came across several hundred hosts. The search was quite over whelming, I wanted a host that was affordable, but reliable and had good support, in case something went wrong. I found a good team of people with Hawk Host. I monitor my sites downtime and have seen it go off line when the guys are updating software, and that only takes minutes. Most companies claim the world and deliver an island. I have been with them over a year and will continue to use them.

BryanWeb Designer

After signing up with Hawk Host, our website was able to join the World Wide Web instantly. The customer support staff went out of their way to help, not only representing our website as it should be, but also giving us hints on how to set up a content management system. It is a great service for start up businesses.