 |
| How To Setup Free CloudFlare CDN | Speed up Blogger Site |
Also, read: 5 Tips To Make Your Blog Load 10x Faster
Effect of CloudFlare CDN On Page Loading
Below chart shows the output result by the site performance especially the page load time calculated over a week. Before applying CDN, the blog loading time was around 15sec. but later after applying CDN effectively, it goes around 3sec and now it is around 1.84sec. Data is measured by one of the best free website performance monitoring tool called - Pingdom Pagespeed tool. |
| CDN Effect mesured by Pingdom tools |
About CDN - What Is CDN & How It Works?
Your visitors expect your site to load immediately. And moreover, Google already officially declare that "page speed is one of the factors to consider for search engine ranking". And CDN is highly recommended the technique to speed up to loading time. Instead of going into details about CDN, I would like to explain you in short. CDN - Content Delivery Network - which is located globally across the Internet that will help to serve your web page and content of your site based on the geo-location of the visitor. It makes your site to load fast as it caches your site content and stores it on global servers, so if any user wants to access your page from any location, then instead of going to the primary hosted server which is far away from user, the user request is then served by his nearest CDN server. This makes fast loading of your site and also improve page views and user engagement. CDN not only caches your content to serve your readers but also optimizes your site entities like JavaScript�s, CSS & HTML. The overall effect will decrease the load on your server and gradually improves the performance of the site.Install CDN in Blogger Blog - CloudFlare
CloudFlare is one of the best CDN service providers which grants FREE bandwidth for CDN and work with any type of static as well as dynamic content websites, Control Management Services [CMS], blog including Blogger, WordPress, Drupal, Tumbler and much more. CloudFlare is really easy to setup and provides DNS, DDos protection including FREE global CDN. They have their own custom-built system that is specially designed to run every website fast on the Internet globally. There are pro features also available to highly customize your site contents and entities that include Session Optimization, Prioritized Requests, Business and Enterprise features like Railgun and Automatic IPv6.Step by Step Guide to Install CDN - CloudFlare
You may have heard that there are too many professional bloggers are using CDN to make their site to load faster, but for your blogger site, you need to have your own domain like www.yoursite.com. As it uses DNS of your site, so then only you can use CDN service for your blogger blog. You can check your current DNS on http://www.hypestat.com/. If you don�t have, then you need to purchase URL domain name for your blog or in addition, if you want web hosting as per your requirement get it from top dedicated web hosting companies listed as HostGator, BlueHost, GoDaddy and so on. So here I am assuming that you have your own domain name and you are aware of DNS settings.Read: Top 10 Websites To Check Page Load Time & Performance
Follow the steps as it written:
- Go to CloudFlare site and sign up on https://www.cloudflare.com/
Add your website and click on 'Scan DNS Records'. This will take 60sec. to scan DNS records.
- Next window will show the DNS Records for yoursite.com. Here you need to check and verify all DNS settings & nameservers are same as per your domain provider, if not, then you can easily add here A, AAAA, and CNAME records. Then click on Continue.
- Select a CloudFlare Plan as a FREE WEBSITE. If you want you may go with Pro, Business or Enterprise Website plan to get more advanced features of CDN. Click on Continue.
- In next window, you need to change your nameservers on your domain name provider site. Copy nameservers from CloudFlare and paste as they suggested on your domain provider website. This process can take up to 24 hours to fully functional. Note that, your website will not experience any downtime when you change your nameservers. After that click on continue.
- Now you will get the status of your site getting added into CloudFlare. It requires 24hours to be processed. Your site will remain available throughout the switch.
[I would like to suggest you to recheck nameservers after 20 to 30 min, it will get active if you did all above steps correctly].
- You are now activated CloudFlare.
Now CloudFlare CDN server started to cache all your site data and contents including JavaScript�s, CSS, & HTML for better serving to all of your visitors from all over the globe. From then, you will see improvements not only in website loading but also in page views, bounce rate along with security protection against traffic surges.
Bottom Line
On my point of view, to use a CDN is very useful to make a website much faster than ever, more secure and even SEO optimized. Personally, I'd definitely recommend CloudFlare CDN services for serious bloggers or websites owners. This CDN network is one of the leaders of the CDN industry and even more than 2 million sites including the big names like Cisco, BainCapital has chosen them. Though for a regular website they are also ready to offer their FREE services and the website surely will work as fast as possible. And also, your site will be secured and well-optimized like a brand.Let me know what you thought on this? Which plan you have chosen and how CloudFlare worked with your site.
EmoticonEmoticon