How to Setup CloudFlare On Your Website [DDoS Proof Your Site]

[BioHazaЯd™]

First of all, what is CloudFlare?
CloudFlare is a free service which essentially acts as a firewall for your site. Basically, your websites IP will be completely hidden from your users. If someone were to ping your website, they would only see CloudFlare's IP address. If someone were to DDoS your website, your server would be perfectly fine and functional. CloudFlare can do a lot more then just protect your IP address. It also can dramatically reduce your bandwidth by caching images on their servers.

Basically, your website, connects to CouldFlare's servers, who connect to your host.

Bet most of you didn't know that Hackforums uses Cloudflare too.


Setting Up CloudFlare

How to protect your websites with Cloudflare?

I'll just go right into my step by step guide. This really shouldn't take much time at all to complete.

1. Go to http://cloudflare.com and sign up. There really is no need to make a paid account. It costs $20 a month but gives you some extra features.

2. Now it will give you a space to add a domain. Just type your websites URL here. You can add more in the future as well.

At this point, it will show you a video which you must play in order to proceed. Shouldn't take too long. About 50 seconds. Once it's over, click continue to step 2.

3. Now you will need to add your DNS information. In most cases, it will automatically detect your DNS info but in some, you will need to fill it in manually.
If you normally redirect your website to a hostname, you would select 'A (Hostname)'.
If you need any other types of records, they should be in the drop down list.

Once you're done with this step, click the button at the bottom to proceed to the next.

4. Now if everything looks alright, click the next button at the bottom. You can always come back and edit it in the future.

5. Now it will give you the DNS records which you must update your website to. You must log into your registar and have your domain point to those to DNS servers.
After you have finished updating, click the button at the bottom to continue.

After everything has successfully updating, you can go back to your dashboard and access your account. If you click websites on the top navigation bar, it should bring you to a page listing all of your sites.

Settings

Now would be a good time to update some of your Cloudflare Settings. To do so, click the drop down box near your domain on the Website's tab.

Below, I will list what I personally keep each setting on.

Basic Security Level - Medium
Caching Level- Aggressive
Auto Minify - Enabled
Rocket Loader - Automatic
Challenge Passage TTL - 45 minutes
Customize Challenge Page - You can do whatever you want with this.
Advanced Security - You need to pay for this feature.
Website Preloader - Paid feature.
Outbound Links - On
E-mail Address Obfuscation - On
Server Side Exclude (SSE) - On
Always Online - On
IP Geolocation- On
Google Analytics - I use this, however, you need to set it up yourself.
Browser Integrity Check - On
Hotlink Protection - Off. I don't recommend using this for most. Read the description for more details
Cache Purge - This cleans out the cache stored on CloudFlares server. Clean if updating.
Development Mode - Only use this if you're working on your site.

Thanks for reading. if you have any questions, please post or ask me. Enjoy not being DDoS'd anymore!

-BioHazaЯd™

[damoncloudflare]

First of all, what is CloudFlare?
CloudFlare is a free service which essentially acts as a firewall for your site. Basically, your websites IP will be completely hidden from your users. If someone were to ping your website, they would only see CloudFlare's IP address. If someone were to DDoS your website, your server would be perfectly fine and functional. CloudFlare can do a lot more then just protect your IP address. It also can dramatically reduce your bandwidth by caching images on their servers.

Basically, your website, connects to CouldFlare's servers, who connect to your host.

Bet most of you didn't know that Hackforums uses Cloudflare too.


Setting Up CloudFlare

How to protect your websites with Cloudflare?

I'll just go right into my step by step guide. This really shouldn't take much time at all to complete.

1. Go to http://cloudflare.com and sign up. There really is no need to make a paid account. It costs $20 a month but gives you some extra features.

2. Now it will give you a space to add a domain. Just type your websites URL here. You can add more in the future as well.

At this point, it will show you a video which you must play in order to proceed. Shouldn't take too long. About 50 seconds. Once it's over, click continue to step 2.

3. Now you will need to add your DNS information. In most cases, it will automatically detect your DNS info but in some, you will need to fill it in manually.
If you normally redirect your website to a hostname, you would select 'A (Hostname)'.
If you need any other types of records, they should be in the drop down list.

Once you're done with this step, click the button at the bottom to proceed to the next.

4. Now if everything looks alright, click the next button at the bottom. You can always come back and edit it in the future.

5. Now it will give you the DNS records which you must update your website to. You must log into your registar and have your domain point to those to DNS servers.
After you have finished updating, click the button at the bottom to continue.

After everything has successfully updating, you can go back to your dashboard and access your account. If you click websites on the top navigation bar, it should bring you to a page listing all of your sites.

Settings

Now would be a good time to update some of your Cloudflare Settings. To do so, click the drop down box near your domain on the Website's tab.

Below, I will list what I personally keep each setting on.

Basic Security Level - Medium
Caching Level- Aggressive
Auto Minify - Enabled
Rocket Loader - Automatic
Challenge Passage TTL - 45 minutes
Customize Challenge Page - You can do whatever you want with this.
Advanced Security - You need to pay for this feature.
Website Preloader - Paid feature.
Outbound Links - On
E-mail Address Obfuscation - On
Server Side Exclude (SSE) - On
Always Online - On
IP Geolocation- On
Google Analytics - I use this, however, you need to set it up yourself.
Browser Integrity Check - On
Hotlink Protection - Off. I don't recommend using this for most. Read the description for more details
Cache Purge - This cleans out the cache stored on CloudFlares server. Clean if updating.
Development Mode - Only use this if you're working on your site.

Thanks for reading. if you have any questions, please post or ask me. Enjoy not being DDoS'd anymore!

-BioHazaЯd™

Thanks for posting this information about CloudFlare. I would also recommend that new users read these CloudFlare tips as well.

[mrlips]

looks cool, thanks for sharing this

[Laughynose]

Thanks for sharing, very nice release!

[Black Demon]

Nice post, I already use CloudFlare but I never thought of making a post on how to use it.
Anyway keep it up with your good posting, this one was very helpful.

[damoncloudflare]

One thing I would like to clarify:

CloudFlare isn't a full DDoS solution. While we can most certainly help mitigate some attacks, we do have to go direct to your server if the attack starts impacting other customers.

If you know you're getting DDoS'd from a certain country, however, you could always "block" that country in your CloudFlare 'Threat Control' panel. All visitors from that country would get a challenge page that they would have to pass to make requests to your site.

[codevade]

One thing I would like to clarify:

CloudFlare isn't a full DDoS solution. While we can most certainly help mitigate some attacks, we do have to go direct to your server if the attack starts impacting other customers.

If you know you're getting DDoS'd from a certain country, however, you could always "block" that country in your CloudFlare 'Threat Control' panel. All visitors from that country would get a challenge page that they would have to pass to make requests to your site.

being a cloudflare member for about 5 months now i have seen people take down the entire website www.cloudflare.c o m and also have seen members launch massive attacks against cloudflare-protected sites and seen them crumble under the pressure.

[Sykez]

Nice guide, never knew Omni uses this. Will have to use this when I get a website, its better than nothing.

[cOld fus1on]

This is pretty neat!, I'm gonna have to look into it.
Thanks for sharing.

[Spafic]

Thanks a lot for this!

Helped me a lot!