Dolke Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 (edited) Hi to all, I have been off the forum for almost 3 weeks now as I had some other offline stuff to be done. I also noticed that starting to many different questions here on the community forums is not always good idea as you are not focused on one particular task. Instead you are switching between many different types of work like optimization, SEO, some css editing and so on... I will leave my previous topics as is and start new one here and maybe one or 2 more later on. This topic is about Content Delivery Network that Prestashop officially recommends to be used with Prestashop powered websites. I noticed in the back office that Prestashop has build in feature to use CloudCashe service. I found that many people use CloudFlare instead as they are providing free plan. As my budget is quite limited and I would like to test CDN behavior before I buy anything regarding it, CloudFlare seems like a great choice. What do you people think and what CDN service you use for your PS websites? Any other useful info about CDN, how they work and how they speed up your website is welcomed. Thank you in advance. In addition to this post: I checked with my hosting provider, HostGator, and they support CloudFlare even on a shared servers where my website is currently hosted. Dean. Edited July 22, 2013 by Dolke (see edit history) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 I would choose cloudflare over cloudcache personally. Cloudflare is a pretty big company that has a good reputation. Although, if I remember correctly, you are selling locally. If that is still the case, I would just get a local hosting company. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolke Posted July 22, 2013 Author Share Posted July 22, 2013 Yes Dh, you are correct. Im selling only locally on Serbian market. Problem with serbian hosting providers are usually lack of quality and support and most of all prize. I might get some other European hosting provider so servers are closer then right now when Im hosting with HostGator but that wont happen any time soon (at least few months). So great, cloudflare is good solution. What about their free plan? Is it good for starter like me? Thanks. I didnt forget about our voice talk, hopefully we will cooperate soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 You can test out the free version, I have never actually used the free one. I used the $20 a month paid version. It has it pro's and cons, but if you are getting a lot of traffic it can help out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolke Posted July 22, 2013 Author Share Posted July 22, 2013 OK, I will certainly try out the free version. Dh, do I need to change name servers once I setup my CloudFlare account? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 You will, once you set up the account they will give you name server names to use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolke Posted July 22, 2013 Author Share Posted July 22, 2013 ok thanks Dh. When we talk about CDN and speeding up the website with it, do we think only speeding it up for the front end visitors or this speed up should reflect to back office as well? Also, will it affect some feature execution times in the back office or not? Thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 It will do nothing for the backend as far as speeding the site up. More than likely you won't notice that it speeds the front end up either. CDN's do nothing to reduce the execution time of your site. All they do is host static resources closer to where your users are. But those caches take time to build up as well. Then they are going to attach a cookie to every resource on top of the Prestashop cookie. I think the speed boost will be minimal if anything. Check this out, http://blog.dh42.com/cloudflare-showdown/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
indus Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 If your customers are local visitors mostly, then CDN's wont really make a difference. Its mostly used by larger websites who have visitors from around the world so content is served from a nearby location for any visitor. It also prevents slowdowns against DDOS attacks which again are mostly targeted at large websites mostly global. Also, the free plans dont support SSL, so if you use SSL for any pages then the free plan wont work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolke Posted July 22, 2013 Author Share Posted July 22, 2013 (edited) Very interesting post. You certainly put very much effort in those tests. I think my case is slightly different then those websites you tested. My server is in the USA and most of the visitors are from Serbia or surrounding countries. Using CloudFlare and their European data center should speed up the website significantly... or not? I dont use SSL on my website. Edited July 22, 2013 by Dolke (see edit history) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 I think a european data center would be your best bet. How much traffic are you currently getting? Cloudflare never really releases how much traffic a site has to get for the cache to get primed. Also, it will not help anything on the execution time that your php files take. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolke Posted July 22, 2013 Author Share Posted July 22, 2013 Here is the printscreen from the GA: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 It could very well speed things up, the best advice I can give is try it. It more than likely won't hurt anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolke Posted July 22, 2013 Author Share Posted July 22, 2013 OK thanks Dh. I will make a gtmetrics test before and after CF and post my results here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolke Posted August 5, 2013 Author Share Posted August 5, 2013 Hi to all. Here are both tests on GTmetrics prior and after the CDN usage. Prior to CDN: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zn7145a3fc5bq03/Pre%20uvo%C4%91enja%20CDN-a.pdf After the CDN: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dmketw79he74vx9/Nakon%20uvo%C4%91enja%20CDN-a.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolke Posted August 5, 2013 Author Share Posted August 5, 2013 (edited) . Edited August 5, 2013 by Dolke (see edit history) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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