Looking for Cloudflare Free flexible SSL Certificate and CDN for your WordPress website to improve loading time then Cloudflare is the best choice.
A website that has an SSL certificate and loads faster, ranks higher on the search engine result page (SERP).
Recently Google has announced a new algorithm update called speed update (which will roll out from July 2018). With speed updates, Google uses page speed as a ranking factor in mobile search. For the desktop version, this update was rolled out in 2011.
Table of Contents
What is Cloudflare?
According to Wikipedia Cloudflare provides a content delivery network, DDOS mitigation, Internet security services, and distributed domain name server services, sitting between the visitor and the Cloudflare user’s hosting provider, acting as a reverse proxy for websites.
Key Features:
- Improves website security
- Offers SSL certificate
- Offers Free CDN
According to Google, a website should load within 3 seconds and the page size should not exceed 500KB. With the use of Cloudflare CDN, you can reduce your website’s loading time for free. If a website takes time to load then it will also increase bounce and will affect search engine ranking.
The SSL certificate increases the trust of both the visitor and search engine which also improves the search engine ranking of the website.
Cloudflare not only provides a free SSL certificate and CDN but also adds an additional layer of security, blocking bots and spam comments from the website.
There are many paid CDN and SSL certificates available, but if you are looking for these services for free then Cloudflare offers these services both CDN and SSL certificates for free. Cloudflare also offers some paid plans too. there are also some other companies that offer paid CDN services like Max CDN etc.
So, without any further delay let’s gets started.
Before you start, you have to check whether your Cpanel has Cloudflare app in it. If your Cpanel doesn’t have a Cloudflare app then no problem. you can use the Cloudflare website.
Steps to setup Cloudflare’s Free SSL Certificate:
1. First, go to the Cloudflare website and sign-up.
2. Next, you have to enter your website.
3. Choose the plan whether you want a free plan or paid plan. The paid plans offer some additional features. In this case, I will go with the free plan.
4. Then on the next page, select the files that you want Cloudflare to cache and minify. It is better if you can select all the files. (click on the cloud icons as shown in the 2nd image).
5. Now, select the plan for your Cloudflare account. you can choose from a free website, a pro website which will cost around $20/month, and a business website which will cost around $200/month.
6. Lastly, you have to change your nameserver from the old one to the new Cloudflare DNS nameserver.
7. To change nameserver you have to go to your domain service provider, in my case I have purchased my domain from Godaddy.
8. Choose your domain and under additional settings, you can find the manage DNS option. Click on the manage DNS.
9. This will take you to the new page where you can find the nameservers option and click on the green change button and paste the nameserver given by Cloudflare and update your nameserver.
These complete changes will take 24 to 48 hours to update the nameserver (sometimes the DNS changes within 1 hour). Next, update your web pages from HTTP to HTTPS. But if you are using WordPress, then it can be done by just installing a plugin called really simply SSL which will convert all the web pages to HTTPS. Just install and activate the plugin. After activating the plugin you will get a notification to convert all the existing web pages to secured pages.
After your DNS gets activated, go to the dashboard of your Cloudflare account and you can see yourself in the overview tab where it says that your website is on Cloudflare.
Steps to Setup Cloudflare CDN
1. On the Cloudflare dashboard first click on the speed tab, here in the auto minify choose all the three options which Javascript, CSS, and HTML.
2. Under enabling Accelerated Mobile links, convert enable accelerated mobile links and show SMP logo before links to ON.
3. In the rocket loader section choose automatically.
Caching Tab
4. Now click on the caching tab above go to the caching level option and choose a standard option and keep the rest of the options by default.
Page Rule Tab
5. In the page rule section first, choose browser integrity check and make it on.
6. Now choose browser cache TTL, make this to 30 minutes.
7. Next, choose security level and select high.
8. Now select cache level and click bypass
{ copy the steps as shown in the image below}
and at last, click on save.
If you are using WordPress then you can link your Cloudflare account either by W3 total cache or the Cloudflare plugin.
I will recommend going with the W3 total cache plugin where under the extension option you can find the Cloudflare option and activate it by pasting the API key.
Wp fastest cache is also a great cache plugin & you can also link your Cloudflare account to improve your WordPress website speed.
Note: If you are minifying HTML, CSS, and Javascript in both using W3 total cache or any other plugin and also minifying through Cloudflare, then your site may break. So, test your site after minifying. If it is breaking your site then remove that minification from that plugin.
Conclusion:
Follow these steps to set up Cloudflare free flexible SSL with free CDN and DNS and make your WordPress site load faster. If you have a question regarding Cloudflare free SSL and CDN, fill free to comment below.
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