eBlack Diamond is a service provider that strategically works with technology partners to provide affordable websites for our customers. This technology partner spotlight will focus on Cloudflare. This article will give an overview of the company history, services they provide, and how eBlack Diamond leverages these services on behalf of our clients to provide fast, secure, and affordable online solutions.
Cloudflare is one of the largest Internet networks in the world. Cloudflare provides web performance and security services to millions of websites. It acts as a content delivery network (CDN) and security layer in front of a website’s server or host. Cloudflare services caches static content on servers around the world, with over 330 cities throughout the network, so when a visitor goes to a webpage, those images and pages are fetched from the nearest location. The result is websites load faster and stay protected from attacks. Cloudflare gives small sites enterprise level infrastructure, ensuring faster page loads and stronger protection for visitors and site owners alike.
Cloudflare was founded by Matthew Prince, Michelle Zatlyn, and Lee Holloway. Cloudflare website indicates it began from a concept called “Project Honey Pot” (2004) an anti-spam initiative to understand malicious web traffic created by Matthew Prince and Lee Holloway. In 2009, while Matthew attended Harvard Business School, he collaborated with fellow classmate Michelle Zatlyn, to turn that tracking system into a proactive security service, winning the prestigious Harvard Business School Business Plan competition. They named the new company “Cloudflare” as a play on “firewall in the cloud.” The service launched publicly at TechCrunch Disrupt in September 2010. Over the next decade Cloudflare expanded rapidly bringing its network to 330 data centers and building dozens of products. Cloudflare went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2019 under ticker NET.
An enormous volume of internet traffic flows through the Cloudflare network. According to Cloudflare published statistics, on average 80+ million HTTP requests are processed per second, and 20% of websites worldwide are protected with Cloudflare. These statistics highlight the massive scale and influence of Cloudflare’s network on the Internet.
Cloudflare offers a broad suite of features to make websites faster and more secure. Key services include:
Global CDN & DNS: Cloudflare caches and delivers content from its extensive network of edge servers around the world, and provides fast, anycast DNS. Domains can be purchased through Cloudflare DNS registrar, or domains can be added to Cloudflare by updating settings to use Cloudflare’s authoritative name servers.
Cloudflare Pages: A fast and secure way to build and host JAMstack sites. JAMstack is a website or application built on 3 elements, JavaScript, APIs, and Markup. Pages has built-in Git integration, so developers can connect their code repositories to Cloudflare Pages and it automatically builds and deploys sites to edge servers with each commit.
Cloudflare Workers: A serverless platform that lets you run custom code across Cloudflare's global network with no infrastructure to manage. With workers, developers can build full-stack apps and integrate by connecting to external services like databases or APIs.
Security & SSL/TLS: Cloudflare plans offer SSL/TLS certificates for any account. A website with Cloudflare can activate encryption with a few clicks. A website that implements SSL/TLS has "HTTPS" in its URL instead of "HTTP." This encryption protocol encrypts data that is transmitted across the web ensuring privacy, authentication, and data integrity.
Together, these services, and others like smart routing, image/video optimization, and mobile acceleration, provide a unified platform. Small businesses can take advantage of enterprise-grade tools (global CDN, security) without needing a large IT team.
Setting up Cloudflare is straightforward via their online dashboard. Start by signing up for an account on Cloudflare’s website. Once logged in, a clean web interface is used to manage all domains and settings. This dashboard is organized by site and feature. Through the dashboard there is the ability to add a site, view DNS records, and toggle services like SSL or caching on/off. Key information is presented graphically: for each site there are traffic charts, security events, and cache statistics. eBlack Diamond can set up and manage the account on behalf of our clients and configure DNS, security rules, or email forwarding. The dashboard also offers upgrade paths if advanced features like enhanced DDoS or load balancing are needed.
Cloudflare is a domain registrar, meaning that domain names can be purchased, managed, and renewed directly through Cloudflare. In addition, Cloudflare provides strong security on domain management: two-factor authentication, DNSSEC, and domain locking by default. Cloudflare’s registrar charge only the domain registry fee and ICANN fee. Notably, clients can still use Cloudflare’s domain services even if the domain is registered elsewhere. Customers have the flexibility to register a domain with Cloudflare for best pricing or keep an existing registrar and point DNS to Cloudflare’s nameservers. Either way, Cloudflare ensures that domain names are protected and affordable.
The DNS service from Cloudflare is consistently reliable. When adding a site from another registrar to Cloudflare, the service automatically scans the current DNS records and assigns two Cloudflare name servers. In the original domain registrar, log in and update the nameservers to Cloudflare’s. Once done, all DNS queries for that domain name are answered by Cloudflare’s global network. This means very fast DNS resolution anywhere, and anycast failover if one data center is down. If unable to change nameservers with existing registrar, Cloudflare also offers partial setups (CNAME) in higher level plans. eBlack Diamond can set up or migrate client DNS to Cloudflare: we add the site, verify the records, and after the nameserver switch the site runs on Cloudflare DNS. The built-in scanning makes it seamless to move existing sites by importing the necessary A, CNAME, MX, and other records from the old provider. The outcome is a dependable DNS framework tailored to each site’s needs.
Cloudflare provides an Email Routing service for any domain on its platform. This enables clients to create custom email addresses (for example: info@yourdomain.com or support@yourdomain.com) and forward incoming mail to another inbox (such as a Gmail or Outlook address). Cloudflare automatically sets up the required DNS records and handles the forwarding; clients never need to host a mailbox or pay for an email server. Importantly, Email Routing is private and secure: Cloudflare does not store email contents and uses spam/phishing filters, so only valid messages are forwarded. This allows businesses to get a professional domain email address with no extra cost or upgrades. Define aliases in the Cloudflare dashboard and choose where they forward. Behind the scenes, Cloudflare’s servers receive the mail and pass it on, so customer can use their familiar email client as usual.
Every website on Cloudflare can be secured with HTTPS, which layers TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption over the standard HTTP protocol used by browsers and web servers. This setup establishes a secure connection through a certificate-based handshake between the client and server, ensuring encrypted communication, verified identity, and data integrity. Customers visiting the site will see the padlock icon in their browser and all data is encrypted in transit.
TLS is the modern successor to SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), the original protocol for securing web traffic. Although TLS has replaced SSL in practice, the term “SSL certificate” is still commonly used due to their shared history. Most certificates issued today are TLS certificates, enabling secure connections through updated encryption standards.
Cloudflare’s security features help block threats while allowing legitimate users through. Cloudflare has built in features that protects sites from DDoS attacks and filters out malicious bots. A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a purposeful attempt to disrupt normal internet traffic by targeting a server or network by overwhelming it with a flood of requests. These attacks cause an unexpected traffic jam, preventing regular traffic and slowing down or even crashing networks.
In addition, through the Cloudflare dashboard Firewall Rules or IP Access Rules can be set up to block traffic by country, whitelist certain IP’s, or present CAPTCHA’s to validate human visitors. Also, Cloudflare Access can wrap a site or section of a site with login requirements (e.g. only staff who authenticate with Google can enter).
These features, if enabled will result in secured site accessible only to authorized users, with malicious traffic proactively filtered by Cloudflare’s comprehensive security stack.
Cloudflare provides built-in analytics in the dashboard so metrics can be reviewed to see site performance. The Analytic and logs show data like total HTTP requests, data transfer (bandwidth), page views, and cache hit ratios. Security metrics report number of threats blocked, top attack sources, and total unique visitors.
For eBlack Diamond, these insights are valuable for understanding usage and explaining results to clients. These charts and logs are all accessible online, making it easy for a small business owner to keep track of traffic growth, peak usage times, and security events without needing a separate analytics setup.
While this article only covers a portion of the Cloudflare services at a high level, eBlack Diamond trusts Cloudflare’s platform to deliver a core of our web solutions. We use Cloudflare’s DNS and CDN to ensure client websites load from servers near their visitors, leveraging Cloudflare’s 330+ data centers around the world. We take advantage of Cloudflare’s SSL and bot/DDoS protection to make every site secure. Cloudflare’s email forwarding gives our clients professional domain email addresses, and its dashboard analytics let us monitor site health and report on usage. By using Cloudflare’s many features, eBlack Diamond can build fast, reliable, and secure websites for our customers at an affordable price.
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