How to Enable Cloudflare CDN

Cloudflare speeds up page loading and reduces delays, providing visitors with quick access to your content and enhancing their browsing experience.  By using Cloudflare, you can enhance the overall browsing experience for your users, leading to higher engagement and lower bounce rates.

In this article, we will guide you through managing Cloudflare within your Bluehost Account Manager, as well as show you other functionalities, such as clearing your website's cache to maintain optimal performance.

We will discuss the following topics in this article.

• Managing your Cloudflare Settings
• Benefits of Cloudflare CDN
• Understanding How Caching Works
• Should I Change My Name Servers for Cloudflare?
• Summary

We created a video to help you enable Cloudflare CDN in your Bluehost Account Manager.

Managing your Cloudflare Settings

Here are the steps for managing the Cloudflare CDN settings in your Account Manager.

1. Log in to your Bluehost Account Manager.
2. Click Websites on the left side of the navigation menu.

   
    

3. On the website management page, click the PERFORMANCE tab in the top menu.

   
    

4. Under the Performance tab, you'll find the following cards:
   • Cloudflare
   • Caching Control
   • Clear Cache
   • Clear Cache for a Specific URL
   • PageSpeed Insights ↗ - Optimize your website's speed using PageSpeed Insights. Refer to this article for the deets!

     

   Cloudflare

   Cloudflare is a global CDN network that boosts website performance, safety, and efficiency. It accelerates page loading, defends against threats, and minimizes unwanted bot activity, conserving bandwidth and server resources.

   1. Scroll down to the Cloudflare section.
   2. Use the toggle to enable Cloudflare.

      
       

   3. A confirmation pop-up window will appear. Click CONFIRM to proceed.

   Caching Control

   Toggle Caching Control on or off to manage your website's speed and performance. This feature stores a copy of your website's content online, which helps your web pages load faster for visitors. You can also choose your preferred Caching Level from the dropdown menu.

   

   • Assets Only - This is recommended for e-commerce and websites that update frequently or display information in real time. Cache static assets like images and the appearance of your site for 5 minutes.
   • Assets & Web Pages - This is recommended for blogs, educational websites, and sites that update at least weekly. Cache static assets for 6 hours and other web pages for 5 minutes.
   • Assets & Web Pages—Extended - This is recommended for portfolios, brochure sites, and sites that update monthly or less often. It caches static assets for one week and web pages for five minutes.

   Clear Cache

   Click the CLEAR ALL button under Clear Cache to clear the cache of all assets and web pages so your site visitors will see the most up-to-date version of your website.

   

   Clear Cache for a Specific URL

   If your website still doesn't update after publishing changes, consider clearing the cache of your URL. Click the CLEAR URL  button to continue.

   

Benefits of Cloudflare CDN

Pros

• Improved site performance - Cloudflare CDN improves text, image, and video content speed, which reduces load time. Quicker load time means a better experience for your users.
• Global content delivery - Cloudflare CDN consists of over 150 edge locations strategically positioned across the globe. These locations cache frequently requested files and web pages to serve optimized web content to visitors from the location closest to them.
• Reduced latency - Cloudflare CDN helps reduce the time a request takes to reach the server and return a web page with locations around the globe. Your content is served up fresh, anytime, anywhere.
• Spam reduction - Cloudflare CDN uses information from other sources to help decrease spam comments on your site.
• Lower CPU usage - With Cloudflare CDN, fewer requests will hit our servers, reducing CPU usage attributed to your account.
• Always available - Cloudflare has an offline browsing mode where visitors can still access your site if our server is unavailable.

Cons

• No option to customize - Currently, you cannot customize cache settings (for example, which content gets cached, the cache timing, etc.) for the CDN.
• Cached content - Cloudflare caches the static content from your site, so while this will reduce the load on the server, it means that if you change an existing static file, then there may be a delay before the change appears.

Understanding How Caching Works

Caching enhances website performance by storing copies of content in data centers worldwide. While static content can be cached, dynamic content cannot. Cached content is stored closer to users, making it faster and reducing the need to process it again.

If you publish changes to your website and they don't appear, you can clear the cache. This action will prompt Cloudflare to retrieve the latest version of those files from your web server.

Should I Change My Name Servers for Cloudflare?

If you purchased and registered your domain with Bluehost, you can automatically enable Cloudflare. However, if you purchased a domain with another provider, you will need to ensure that your domain is pointed to your Bluehost account. For more information on how to update your name servers, visit our support guide: How to Navigate the Nameservers Tab in Account Manager.

Summary

Cloudflare CDN can significantly improve your website's speed and security. By using Cloudflare, you'll take advantage of a powerful network that caches your website's content and serves it from locations closest to your visitors, reducing load times and enhancing user experience. Cloudflare also offers robust protection against DDoS attacks and other threats, ensuring your site remains secure and reliable.