April 09, 2019
Hello, In today’s post I will talk about How to Setup CloudFlare CDN and (Https) Free SSL certificate on WordPress and also learn how you can create a Free Account on CloudFlare. The main reason behind of CloudFlare setup is, it can improve your loading speed by using CDN and also it provide free SSL (HTTPS) certificate for the lifetime.
The SSL certificate also a very important thing in 2019 for a website, because it provides privacy between the user to the server. if your blog does not have an HTTPS then google can decrease your ranking in search engine
Google Chrome Marked All Non-SSL Sites as “Not Secure” from June 2018
According to the Google recent reports, Google recently announced that the Chrome 68 browser has been released, in June 2018, it marked all websites or blog not protected by SSL as Not secure. According to Google, any HTTP page will be treated as shown below.
So SSL certificate is also necessary for every small or big WordPress blog. so I have written a complete guide on Free Cloudflare CDN and Free SSL Certificate, So have a look
Now coming to the website loading speed, Everybody knows, website loading speed matters a lot in website ranking because of nobody like slow websites.
According to the internet search engine reports, if a website or blog takes more than 5-6 seconds in the opening then 50 % readers close the blog before opening it. So Your blog opening speed gives the first impression to the users and you know na… The first impression is the Last Impression.
Apart from this, Google has also added blogging speed to its ranking algorithm i.e. if any blog has slow speed then that blog will never be able to come to google at the rank of search ranking, due to which you will get less amount of traffic on the blog.
So, we all try everything to improve our blog’s loading speed, we are care all small and big problem which can create loading speed issue. and also we compress images, remove unwanted plugins, minimize java and CSS and etc to improve blog loading speed.
Today, in this post, we are going to talk about CDN that can also improve our blog loading speed. as well as we will learn how to Setup free Cloudflare CDN on your WordPress blog.
What is CDN and How it Works
A CDN (content delivery network) refers to a country wise distributed hub of servers, which work together to give fast delivery of static contents. A CDN permits for the fast transfer of assets needed for loading website content including javascript files, HTML pages, images, stylesheets, and videos files. The popularity of Cloudflare services continues to increase, and these days the big amount of web traffics are served through CDNs server, including traffic from big sites like Netflix, Facebook, and Amazon.
Let’s understand it in easier language, Assume that You have two water tank. one is 200 meters away from your house and second is at 50 meters. and now I ask you, which tank’s water you will receive first.
Now you will be thinking about what this stupid question, everyone can tell you that the tank who is near will come first. Similarly, when you host your blog on a server, the server is present in any country or location.
Now assume that your blog is hosted on a server in the US and now if you have a user from the US and If they access your website, then the load time of web pages will be fast on his browser, if you compare it to Indian Users than it will take more time as compared to the US users.
As I said above, the CDN server had a network that could be used for the users of your blog’s geographic location. It sends your blog’s static content (images, CSS and JavaScript) to the user’s computer with the nearest server.
Now you understand that what is CDN. now you are wondering how you will get CDN…Don’t worry there are lots of website and company who provide free and Paid CDN services and one of them is CloudFlare CDN.
What is CloudFlare and How it Works
Today Cloudflare is one of the most popular Free CDN providers, it is popular because of its free and paid CDN plan. it gives a free CDN plan for the website, which is perfect for any small blog and websites. Cloudflare CDN service also protects your blog from DDoS attacks and malicious bots, and by which your site security remains strong.
Cloudflare has different data centers on different locations in the world where they stored your blog’s static files (images, CSS, and JavaScript). so when a user sends a request to your browser to visit a page of your blog then the Cloudflare CDN Send your blog page and static files to your user’s nearest data center and send it to that user.
The main advantage of this process that your blog page loads faster and also it saves bandwidth, because of all your static files already present on CDN server that’s why it consumes a very small amount of bandwidth.
How to Setup CloudFlare CDN on WordPress blog
Step 1: First of all open the CloudFlare website and then click on the Sign-Up button.
Step 2: when you will open, you will see a simple form. where you have to enter your Email id and set a strong password, after that you have to hit on Create account.
Step 3: Now CloudFlare’s dashboard will open in front of you and to setup CloudFlare CDN on your blog you have to click on Add Your Site.
Step 4: Now enter your blog’s domain name and click on the Add Site button. After this, you have to choose Cloudflare’s free CDN plan and click on Confirm planbutton.
Step 5: Now CloudFlare will fetch your hosting DNS and show it in front of you and now you have to click on Continue button.
Step 6: In this step, you have to change the Nameservers of your domain. You will get 2 Cloudflare name server, which you have to replace with your current nameserver, and then click on continue button.
Last Step: After changing Nameservers and then clicking on the Continue button, you will see the Pending status on the dashboard. it will take approximately 24 hours for your Nameservers to get updated and then your site activates on CloudFlare.
How to Setup CloudFlare (HTTPS) Free SSL Certificate on WordPress blog
One of the best features of the Cloudflare service is the support of (HTTPS) free SSL certificate on even the free plan they offer.
SSL full form is Secure Socket Layer and this main purpose is to encrypt the data between you – the client and the server hosting your blog. The secure connection to your blog or website is must these days due to the fact that this will gives you and your readers with a safe and secure browsing experience. Generally, SSL is mostly used on login pages, feedback pages and especially on E-Commerce payment pages. The data your readers or buyers input on the mentioned pages is safely transferred to the server using the high level of Encryption the SSL service provides.
Step 1: First of all, log in on your CloudFlare account.
Step 2: After that, go to the Crypto Tab. here you will see SSL option on the first row.
Step 3: Now you have to select Flexible for Free SSL Certificate.
Step 4: It will take 24Hrs to generate Free SSL certificate for your domain.
Step 5: Now scroll down, you will see an option Always use HTTPS and Automatic HTTPS Rewrites. Turn on Both options.
Step 6: After this, you have to go to Page Rules tab.
Step 7: Here you have to click on Create Page Rules
Step 8: Now you need to enter your website link as given below example.
Step 9: In Then the settings are: select Always Use HTTPS and hit on save and Deploy button.
Step 10: Now You have to log in on your Website admin panel, and Go to Add plugin section
Step 11: Now search Cloudflare Flexible SSL plugin
Step 12: Download and activate that plugin
That’s it… Your HTTPS certificate will be enabled after 12-24 hrs on your website.
Important Note: If you have more than one blog, you do not need to create separate Cloudflare accounts for everyone. You can also add sites to a single account.
