Boost Your Website’s Speed with Free CDN Cloudflare WordPress Optimization

What is CDN?

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network, which is a group of servers located worldwide that work together to provide fastest and more reliable access to website contents cached by CDN servers. Cloudflare is a leading provider of CDN services and offers a free CDN plan that can dramatically improve your website speed and performance. Before proceeding further if you are here to optimize WordPress only, please first optimize your WordPress from server side by using Litespeed Cache or Wp Rocket.
Check our Litespeed Cache Guide.

Requirements for Free CDN Cloudflare WordPress Optimization

A Domain
A website With WordPress or Without WordPress
Superpage Cache Plugin for Cloudflare

Setup Domain or Website with Free CDN Cloudflare

Step 1: Signup for free Cloudflare Account. Verify your email.

Step 2: Login into your account and click on add a Site enter domain name without any www or http https protocol. Select Free Plan and click on continue.

Check Your DNS Records and Click on Continue. Cloudflare will auto detect your all DNS records. Don’t make any changes here. Click On Continue.

Step 3: Copy the Name Servers provided by Cloudflare and update in your Domain DNS records.

Step 4: Open Your Domain Name Provider account, from where you purchased domain. Go to DNS records Settings, click on change name servers or manager name servers then remove all previous name servers and put new name server copied from above step.

Step 5: After Updating nameservers. Click On Done, Check nameservers (on step 3). Now you will see quick start guide click on finish it later.

Step 6: Click on your Website Name Open SSL/TLS menu and click on Overview. Change SSL mode to full and turn off SSL/TLS Recommender.

Step 7: Open Edge Certificates menu. Turn On Always Use HTTPS, Opportunistic Encryption, TLS 1.3, Automatic HTTPS Rewrites. Select TLS 1.2 in Minimum TLS Version option. Turn Off Certificate Transparency Monitoring. Do nothing in Disable Universal SSL option leave it to the default value.

Step 8: Open Security Menu then settings. Turn On Browser Integrity Check, Privacy Pass Support. In Security Level option Select High and in Challenge Passage option Select 1 hour.

Step 9: Open Speed Menu then Optimization. In Auto Minify option Select JavaScript, CSS and HTML. Turn On Brotli option. Turn Off all other options if any of them is turned on.

Step 10: Open Caching Menu then Configuration. In Caching Level option Select Standard and in Browser Cache TTL option Select 1 year. Turn On Crawler Hints and Always Online™. Leave others to their default settings or Turn Off.

Step 11: Open Tiered Cache settings and Turn On Tiered Cache.

Step 12: Open Rules menu then Page Rules and click on Create Page Rule, In URL (required) box type your main Domain URL in asterisk * format. In Pick a setting option Select Cache Level and “cache everything” from Select Cache level option. Save The Page Rule. Your domain should be exact as you defined in wp site URL while installing WordPress.

Create another Page Rule to bypass cache for your Login Page. If you don’t create this Rule you will not be able to login. Type Login URL in URL box e.g *mydomain.com/wp-admin/* , Select Cache Level from Pick a Setting option, Select Bypass from Select Cache Level option. Click on add a setting and select Disable Performance. Save Page Rule.

Repositions the Page Rules. Cache Everything Rule should be set at position 1. You can create only 3 page rules on free cdn plan. Creating wrong page rule will make your website completely inaccessible.

Step 13: Open Network Menu. Turn Off Pseudo IPv4 option. Turn On all other options.

Step 14: Open Scrape Shield menu and Turn Off Hotlink Protection option. Turn On all other options.

Bonus Tip: How to Get Global API Key from Cloudflare

Click on your website name on the “overview” menu scroll down and click on Get your global api key token.

From the option Global API Key click on view, type your password, view the key and click on copy key. Now save the key anywhere for later use. We will use this key in Cache Plugins to optimize with Free CDN Cloudflare. Don’t distribute this key to anyone with this anyone can completely access your website.

Final Verdict

We have covered all the important factors in the guide ” Free CDN Cloudflare WordPress Optimization “. Note that these setting will work with every type of website. It’s not just for WordPress only. This guide will boost your website speed up to 10x faster. This guide is the last of our previous article “speed up Your Slow WordPress website – a comprehensive guide“. Setup your Cloudflare domain with LiteSpeed Cache plugin in this article at Step 19.

Other Guide to Optimize WordPress Speed

Optimize WordPress With LiteSpeed Cache.
Optimize WordPress with Wp Rocket
Optimize WordPress with Object Cache
Optimize WordPress with SuperPage Cache with Cloudflare

FAQS: