Hi, the ISP which holds my moodle (2.6.2) has an optional service called CloudFlare. This service claims
CloudFlare accelerates and protects any website online. On average, a website on CloudFlare:
James,
I have done lot of experimenting with different FREE CDN's (CloudFlare, Incapsula, Google PageSpeed Service), and they all work good, but the performance level are only to be seen with CloudFlare & Google Page Speed (Page Speed is only at google's consent to provide you).
but be very careful when activating CloudFlare on Moodle, start with all basic settings, NO cache of JS,HTML,CSS, Security settings: Medium, and performance: CDN Only, TTL: 4hours, Cache-Level: Basic
rest keep OFF, as RocketLoader tends to play-up with few plug-ins of moodle.
after 2 days, start turning ON things, best bit would be selecting the CDN +Basic Optimizations in performance tab, and keep TTL to 4 hours (as selecting CDN + Basic will increase it to a day).
keep security settings as medium in any case, else it will be blocking clients for no reason.
also, dont turn on KEEP ALWAYS ONLINE (unless you have really bad uptime with server), as I have seen in cases, keeping this ON, cloudFlare do advertise them time to time by showing page saying, "server has no response, but this site is hosted on cloudflare always online technology - click here to learn more".
rest, depending on your content, you CAN enable RocketLoader too (didnt worked well with me, as I am using Tabs Filter so loading use to get stuck), but it really gives a kick to your site's performance.
For your information, moodle.org is using CloudFlare too.
Thx heaps for your comments, v helpful.
The current settings are now set as below, please advise.
Hello james,
Sorry I just skipped your post assuming you have done it,
yes these settings are fine to start
rest, you will see settings in CloudFlare account, in performance tab (click spanner icon in front of domain in cloudflare)
and there you'll see optimizations (3 settings) - CDN, CDN +Basic , and CDN + Full
CDN wont do anything other than just putting your site on multiple POP's so they get closer to the users.
CDN + Basic: in addition to above, will turn on Minify resources for JS, HTML, CSS and will increase cache time from 4 hours to 1 day I think.
CDN + Full : in addition to above, will turn ON Rocket loader as well, now this really will boost performance of your site, but, I have had problems on my moodle, due to the fact that I have customized player on java script + few plugins
whatever settings you change, do test your site using www.gtmetrix.com (give 10 minutes after you made changed before testing site on GTMetrix)
I've used Cloudflare for years with great results, those claims look pretty accurate to me too for some sites, you may not get the same mileage from Moodle but Cloudflare will make a difference.
One word of warning, the free plan will not allow you to use SSL. So if you use HTTPS on your site then this will break, although the paid plan is not exactly expensive.
