Cloudflare Web Hosting

Cloudflare delivers performance, security, reliability and insights for all websites that join the network. Once your website is on Cloudflare, all traffic will be routed through their intelligent global network of 100+ data centers. Cloudflare’s network serves your heaviest website content to visitors based on their location, resulting in optimized page load speeds, reduced bandwidth consumption, and improved SEO. Cloudflare’s platform includes a myriad of security features, including DDoS attack mitigation and a web application firewall (WAF) for paid plans.

To get started with Cloudflare you can setup an account directly through their website. It should take less than 10 minutes to create your Cloudflare account, change your domains nameservers, and start utilizing all the features Cloudflare has to offer!

• 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?

  Cloudflare offers a free plan which all users are eligible to use with Hawk Host’s web hosting. There are also paid Cloudflare plans with expanded features and control, details can be found on Cloudflare’s plans page.

• 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?

  Activating Cloudflare takes less than 10 minutes and it can be activated directly through Cloudflare’s website.

• 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.