Many services rely on Cloudflare as it protects websites from malicious attacks and improves their performance. Cloudflare doesn't require additional third-party services or changes in your code. It operates on the web and is approachable without technical skills.
How does Cloudflare differ from the usual domain provider?
The standard operating process of a domain provider is based on selling domains and routing them to IP addresses. Domain providers, like GoDaddy, rout all users from your domain to the server, even though hackers or bots could also reach your website. Protecting websites from attacks is not in the range of provider responsibilities. When configuring a domain via a provider, IP addresses and nameservers are openly accessible.
Cloudflare is not a hosting or domain provider. When using Cloudflare, you need to possess a domain regardless of your choice of provider. Once you have your active website, you can change the DNS configuration to the Cloudflare servers. By changing your domain name settings, you control the type of traffic that the site is receiving. This means that if there are threats that cause high traffic, then Cloudflare will monitor and control where that malicious traffic is coming from. You will easily know when your site is potentially exposed to attacks.
Short domains and Cloudflare
When you land your short branded domain in Cloudflare, you maintain a proper work of short branded URLs. The installation process is simple as it requires replacing current nameservers in the domain provider with Cloudflare nameservers. As a result, your short domain will be safe from high traffic that could cause an interruption of short URLs' work. Here is an instruction that will help you configure the short domain via Cloudflare for use on Short.io. Make sure you've already bought a domain from any domain provider.
Conclusion
Key features of Cloudflare:
- Reduces website load time.
- Checks users who submit requests to the site. For example, Cloudflare checks the IP addresses, requested resources, and request frequency. This way, Cloudflare protects websites from various threats.
- Provides website access. For example, when the server is unavailable, Cloudflare provides access to the website through a static copy from the Cloudflare cache. Your users will always access the website as well as short links.
- Provides statistics for the domain.
What did you learn?
- Do I really need Cloudflare?
- Is Cloudflare safe to use?
- Should you use Cloudflare DNS?
- Who uses Cloudflare?
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