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-Adrian
This is just quick entry about using DreamPress behind Cloudflare.
Some very broad observations:
Turns out that putting Adrianfeliciano.com behind Cloudflare didn’t seem to have a huge impact on improving overall performance and responsiveness on the public facing end. Originally, my purpose for using Cloudflare was to add another layer to help reduce the overall impact of heavy traffic on my website’s servers, including DDoS attacks, while blocking traffic based on country, to help significantly reduce comments from spam-bots.
Problem was that, in someways, I felt as if Cloudflare actually slowed down initial page loading, from the backend. WordPress is incredibly finicky as it is.
As a result, I removed Cloudflare, and saw an immediate improvement in responsiveness to my website’s front end. I use DreamHost (Affiliate Link) as my webhost and domain name registrar. They already have a solid proxy-cache in place built around NGINX, via my DreamPress Hosting Plan, that can take on a MASSIVE traffic load. Rather than blocking entire countries through Cloudflare or marking individual comments one at a time, I decided to prevent spam-bot comments by refusing guest comments all together. One is now required to be logged in to an active account in order to leave a comment.
If you have something to say, and it is important enough, then you can say it with your name attached.
The only other thing that Cloudflare helped with was domain privacy. By using them as a proxy, Cloudflare also blocked my domain’s registration information from being exposed publicly. Thing is that DreamHost already does this with every domain you register through them (GoDaddy and Hostgator charge extra for domain privacy).
About my current webhost
In case you’re curious, this website is hosted by DreamHost, my current favorite webhost, on their dedicated WordPress plan, DreamPress (Affiliate Link).
I chose them after migrating away from Squarespace and comparing different WordPress hosting plans on Hostgator, SiteGround, InMotion Hosting, and Pressable among several others.
For a variety of reasons, I refuse to touch GoDaddy.
American Bogan, my e-commerce shop, is also hosted under a second DreamPress plan after I decided to migrate it away from Shopify. The combined monthly costs for two Shopify stores on the basic plan ($39.99 x2) plus another $20 each (to allow Shopify’s live shipping rates to connect to Printful) is more than three times what my DreamPress Plus websites cost at $29.95 each!
I now have multiple automatic backups enabled for safety and security and can access far better SEO tools, something that Shopify does not offer unless you install separate apps that each charge you yet another monthly fee.
I also have a shared hosting account with DreamHost. On it, I am currently hosting three websites: one for Zoe’s chainmaille and scalemaille webshop, her best friend’s handcraft shop, and one for Artemis’ official website.
I can host as many websites on my shared-hosting plan (Affiliate Link) as I wish without worry.
DreamHost has been the right combination of price, storage, un-metered bandwidth, expertise, and support for me. I swear to God, I learn something new every time I have to contact Customer Support with a new question!
Bottom Line:
If you’re looking for a good webhost, please consider DreamHost (Affiliate Link).
I’ve been very happy with them for a few years, now!