Page loading speed is one of the top factors considered by Search Engines for better results. If Google considers Site Speed for Search Ranking, then almost all the search engines does so. Even if you use a very basic theme but you have high volume of traffic and that too on shared hosting then surely you need a CDN (Content Distribution Network) and using caching plugin is like cherry on topping. Using CDNhelps in preventing downtime of website by serving a cached page. It helped me a lot to increase blog traffic and reduce Bounce Rate.
So lets see how to configure Cloudflare along with any other CDN (here discussing MaxCDN) in order to improve the loading speed of your WordPress blog.
Note: The below mentioned tutorial is for self-hosted WordPress blogs.
1. Installing & Configuring W3 Total Cache
First install W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin. This is the best caching plugin available for WordPress blogs right now, so if you have installed any other plugin, kindly disable them.
Options you should configure in W3 Total Cache:
- Browser Caching
- Page Cache – Disk
- Database Cache – Disk
- Object Cache – Disk
Configuring Cloudflare For Your Blog
Now signup at Cloudflare to distribute content. It also helps in preventing your website from getting hacked as you can blacklist the IP of visitors. Some webhosts also have option to do it via cPanel but when I did it via cPanel it led to 3 days downtime of my blog.
Update Your Blog’s Nameservers
Now go to your Domain Registrar. Then there update your website’s nameservers via Domain Manager.
2. Configure W3 Total Cache for Cloudflare
Go to the W3 Total Cache settings. Click on Performance and scroll down you will be able to see Network Performance and Security by Cloudflare. Now insert your API in the field provided, also fill your domain name and email which you provided during signup at Cloudflare.
3. Configure W3 Total Cache For MaxCDN
So here is our final step, go to sign up at MaxCDN.You can use coupons to get good discount.The one which recently got popular was “testdrivemaxcdn” by using this coupon you can get 12 months subscription of 1 tb data for just 1 cent, you can Google it for more.
After signup Create a Pull Zone. Enter your website’s URL in Original Server URL including http:// then enter a custom CDN domain. Generally preferred format is cdn.domain.com.Now put any label you want and tick the Compression and finally click on create.
So lets start configuring W3 Total Cache for using MaxCDN. Fill the API key and API ID and leave SSL support auto.
Save the settings, grab a cup of coffee and wait for 24 hours for Cloudflare. You will see a measurable increase in pageviews and decrease in bounce rate. In my case I observed good increase of pageviews by 20%. So are you going to supercharge your blog today?
Thanks for this . I am using Cloudfare
I use W3 cache to speed up my site and configuring it with Max Cdn unleashes the full speed of the site loading.
I’m using MaxCDN and integrated it with W3 cache. It is awesome. It almost improved my site speed up to 20 %
When i use cloud flare my website goes offline and when i stop cloud flare its back to normal. Also when i install any cache plugin while activating its stops. i then have to delete the cache plugin folder. What do i do.
thanx for your comment Rahul 🙂
W3 Total Cache plugin is really awesome plugin for improve our site speed and nowdays google consider website speed.
Aditya : you should use both to get most out of it.
We should use both MaxCDN and Cloudfare or any one??
@rick: you can find coupons at retail me not
Thanx Isha for your feedback.
Do use cloudflare also and then share your experience.
A well written tutorial. I am using CDN with w3 total cache and i m surprised with my blog loading speed. don't have any basic idea of cloudflare. will try it soon.
Amit Shaw : do share your experience here 🙂
jasmine : yes but if you will also use cloudflare,you will get measurable increase in page load time.
I am using w3tc and its really awesome to super fast your wordpress blog.
I will try MaxCDN and CloudFlar soon.
Thanks.
Well Amit, I don’t think you need it anymore on your sites since they are loading just fine. 😀
MaxCDN and W3 Total Cache are great in speeding up the loading of a WordPress blog. You have done a great tutorial here, simple but easy to follow.
Great advice, Was searching for the same way to configure cloudflare on my bogs. Thanks for sorting out my problem,
thanx rocky for your feedback,keep visiting 🙂
nice advice on increasing you wordpress loading speed plus nice tutorial too. thanks for sharing . Currently I am using w3
Bryan
thanx bryan for your feedback.
Glad you liked it 🙂
Rick : Mate,W3 Total Cache is a free plugin 🙂
puneet : I think now you should give this method also a try.
Aakash – Yes, i know that w3 is a free plugin:-) But i was referring to maxcdn (by the way the coupon testdrivemaxcdn does not seem to be working.9
Also wondering how necessary maxcdn or other cdn's are if you just combine cloudflare and w3… Cloudflare seems to offer a faster network, but the free option does not allow the user to upload any static material. If you have very few files, pics and pages i guess you wont gain much for paying for a cdn..?
jen : no doubt total cache is better
aatif : thanx for reading this article and going through blog 🙂
thats a nice way to increase the loading time of wordpress sites. Nice one. I have used super cache plugin one of my wp blog.
Very good advise! I have been using cloudflare for a few months on one of my blogs and it definately makes a difference! Havent tried maxcdn, but it should be possible to use all the benefits of cloudflare without paying for any extra plugins…
Thanks I came across this site. Some of my wordpress blogs are very slow in terms of loading speed. I have used Quick Cache Plugin. Which is better, W3 Total Cache or Quick Cache? Any thoughts? What is the difference?
I still got a doubt on which cache plugin to be used in my blog, "WP Total Cache" or "WP Super Cache". Aakash can you please explain the differences between these two ?
WP Super Cache have only features of page caching & gzip compression whereas Total Cache also offers Minify for Java & CSS, Database caching & the ability to setup a CDN.
Never knew that they got difference 😛 I think then i should move to total cache ! thanks foe the article and specially this comment 😀
Tuan : but if you use both then you can get much better results.yes maxcdn is much better but if we use both it will boost the website loading speed.
I'm using MaxCDN and CloudFlare on my blogs to make a comparison and MaxCDN is by far better. I won't recommend CloudFlare to my readers.