Hi CutPasteProfits,

Who is your hosting provider ?

Cloudflare is a dns resolver and also works like a proxy but in this case, it's a proxy for your server instead of end users.

You have your domain to point to Cloudflare and Cloudflare will will then resolve the domain name into IP address you specify in Cloudflare.
This IP address will be automatically configured during the setup process if the domain name was already setup and working before.

By getting all the traffic to go through Cloudflare, they can then deliver the website from their cache instead of going through your server every single time.

In short, Cloudflare scans the domain name and retain the information like your server IP so it can grab whatever that's needed into their CDN.

You can also change all the information later on. Just like any other DNS manager.

Hope this help you understanding Cloudflare a little bit more.

Hi josephting,

Thanks for answering

"This is where I get confused, because if I change the nameservers, won't it try to load files that don't exist on that server?"

No. A common misconception is that people think nameservers/DNS=hosting (it isn't). As long as you have the correct server IP in your CloudFlare DNS settings for the domain, not to mention all other relevant DNS records, everything will be fine.

Take it from someone who learned the hard way, cloudeflare will not help much with site load times, speed, or uptime. If you have a crappy host, best bet is to move and upgrade to a more professional service.

Once you have your site set up normally just go to Cloudflare and follow the step by step instructions there. Don't change anything on your hosting or nameservers until the cloudflare step by step instructions tell you to.

CDN services and 2nd gen services like Cloudflare work by proxying and caching your content.

Basically, when a request comes to Cloudflare (which is does after you update your DNS), their systems see if they have the content. If not, then they fetch the content directly from your server and cache it on their systems.

The caching part is what CDN's have always done. CloudFlare goes a bit further in that they try to optimize images, js, css and provide some web application security.

If you do move to Cloudflare, test your load times with tools like WebPagetest - Website Performance and Optimization Test or www.pingdom.com.

I've seen highly variable results when using their services. Your hosting must be configured correctly to maximized the effectiveness of Cloudflare or any CDN for that matter.

Have a look at Testomato from Automated Website Monitoring | Testomato

I tested it recently with my own site an found it worked great and now I'm deploying it on clients site. The FTP issue is a but frustrating be it's only a small problem.