MyBB Community Forums

(2014-04-30, 03:52 PM)Monaco Wrote: [ -> ]I've said this before, but it's important and needs to be said again:

We ran Cloudflare for awhile (free version) and it seemed to work on for a week or so, then things started getting slow with lots of errors. We thought it was our server and spend a LOT of time debugging. CF Support was of course non-existant (hey, it was the free version so that's what I expected.) We did a bunch of research, tweaked a few things, but it never seemed to improve. We were even getting site outages (which never happened before CloudFlare.)

So after a month or two of this, we upgraded to the paid version of cloudflare to try to make things work better. Site speed and availability improved again - for a few weeks, then everything went to crap AGAIN. We contacted support and they never had an answer for us.

We eventually turned off CloudFlare, cancelled our account and the site got FAST again.

CloudFlare essentially made our site worse than just running it straight from the server.

Sorry about the bad experience there. How long ago was this We have actually ramped up our support & we're pretty much near 24/7 at this point in time (also still hiring). We provide support to all customers, even free, but we do have to prioritize the support queue based on the pricing plan for the domain (Enterprise and Business, for example, get priority support). We have also created some new tools so we can debug the type of issue you're describing much better than we could in the past.

Again, sorry about the experience you had.

(2014-05-01, 11:28 PM)damoncloudflare Wrote: [ -> ]

(2014-04-30, 03:52 PM)Monaco Wrote: [ -> ]I've said this before, but it's important and needs to be said again:

We ran Cloudflare for awhile (free version) and it seemed to work on for a week or so, then things started getting slow with lots of errors. We thought it was our server and spend a LOT of time debugging. CF Support was of course non-existant (hey, it was the free version so that's what I expected.) We did a bunch of research, tweaked a few things, but it never seemed to improve. We were even getting site outages (which never happened before CloudFlare.)

So after a month or two of this, we upgraded to the paid version of cloudflare to try to make things work better. Site speed and availability improved again - for a few weeks, then everything went to crap AGAIN. We contacted support and they never had an answer for us.

We eventually turned off CloudFlare, cancelled our account and the site got FAST again.

CloudFlare essentially made our site worse than just running it straight from the server.

Sorry about the bad experience there. How long ago was this We have actually ramped up our support & we're pretty much near 24/7 at this point in time (also still hiring). We provide support to all customers, even free, but we do have to prioritize the support queue based on the pricing plan for the domain (Enterprise and Business, for example, get priority support). We have also created some new tools so we can debug the type of issue you're describing much better than we could in the past.

Again, sorry about the experience you had.

What tools?

Hi,

I don't use Cloud Flare and really have not seen a need to use it. I have had my site up for over a year and believe me every bot stops by, but with a combination of the plugins Bad behavior, Fassim Anti Spam and blocking China, Russia and the Ukraine (.httaccess) I have had no problems at all.

What are the reasons I would use a service like Cloud Flare? It just seems to me if you are properly setup you don't need them.

- Rich -

(2014-05-02, 11:46 AM)Vidiot_X Wrote: [ -> ]Hi,

I don't use Cloud Flare and really have not seen a need to use it. I have had my site up for over a year and believe me every bot stops by, but with a combination of the plugins Bad behavior, Fassim Anti Spam and blocking China, Russia and the Ukraine (.httaccess) I have had no problems at all.

What are the reasons I would use a service like Cloud Flare? It just seems to me if you are properly setup you don't need them.

- Rich -

Protection against skiddie attacks?

And when your server gets blasted by hundreds of thousands of false requests your setup isn't going to help. Cloudflare can stop the requests ever even hitting your server. Meaning your server can serve content only to legitimate users. I mainly use Cloudflare to save on bandwidth. I have a number of sites running off my server, some of them serving large files.

Hi,

Right on. With my setup now most of the bots never make it past Bad Behavior which blocks them from getting past that plugin. It's use of the honeypot project and defense against proxies is just wonderful. All that plug needs is an option to challenge proxies or TOR network request with a CAPTCHA for legit users. Fassim blocks them at the registration point effectively preventing them from registering also reducing in bandwidth load. The two together are and effective duo. Right now I get a peak of 30-50 bots (maybe a two hundred in a 24hr period, sometimes half that) all trying to hammer the site with little cost to resources or bandwidth. I know blocking certian countries really reduced the load as well.

But you make a good point as even with he load I have now it will probably increase once my project goes live and that is really why I am asking about Cloud Flare. It sound as if it is a solution for higher traffic boards/sites but I have encountered mixed reviews of it's effectiveness and reliability.

What are the costs involved in using Cloud Flare and is based on bandwidth or a flat rate?

Thanks,
- Rich -

"What tools?"

Monitoring for issues on our network, log access for employees so we can see why there may be an issue, etc.

(2014-05-02, 05:24 PM)Vidiot_X Wrote: [ -> ]What are the costs involved in using Cloud Flare and is based on bandwidth or a flat rate?

Thanks,
- Rich -

"Unl bandwidth" (100 TB), and flat rate at $20, $200 and $5,000+.
https://www.cloudflare.com/plans
My forum uses around 1.1 TB a month so yea.

(2014-05-02, 01:53 PM)Tom K. Wrote: [ -> ]And when your server gets blasted by hundreds of thousands of false requests your setup isn't going to help. Cloudflare can stop the requests ever even hitting your server. Meaning your server can serve content only to legitimate users. I mainly use Cloudflare to save on bandwidth. I have a number of sites running off my server, some of them serving large files.

hundreds of thousands heh


They just redirect the traffic directly at you when you reach a certain point which is always fun.

(2014-05-02, 08:04 PM)damoncloudflare Wrote: [ -> ]"What tools?"

Monitoring for issues on our network, log access for employees so we can see why there may be an issue, etc.

Ah thought you meant something we could use to detect where the failures are happening <_>

I have considered using Cloudflare, but I seem to run jnto an error where the IP is maked to Cloudflare's IP so it defeats my only way to find multi accounters.

(2014-05-07, 04:21 AM)Alexander Evans Wrote: [ -> ]I have considered using Cloudflare, but I seem to run jnto an error where the IP is maked to Cloudflare's IP so it defeats my only way to find multi accounters.

You can enable the forwarding option in MyBB, or the more recommended option is to use the Apache real IP module (or something like that). Tired right now, so I'm not trying to give you a detailed explanation, just leading you in the right direction.

https://www.cloudflare.com/resources-dow...cloudflare

If you're running Nginx, it's even more simple! Research it, it's very simple to restore original IPs. However, it might be a bit of a challenge if you're running shared hosting. The company I used to use (interserver.net) installed the Apache module for me, though. Depends on your hosting company and their policies, Interserver happened to be a CloudFlare partner (or something of that nature), so that immediately did it.