February 2012 Summaries

The text discusses how to add SSL encryption to third-party platforms like Tumblr, WordPress, Blogger, AppEngine, Posterous, Ning, TypePad, and Smugmug using CloudFlare. To do this, users need to set up a custom domain for their site and then add it to CloudFlare. SSL is now included in all plans, but users will need to select one of the paid plans to get SSL support. The Flexible SSL setup ensures that connections from a browser to CloudFlare are encrypted via HTTPS, while connections from CloudFlare to the platform pass over unencrypted HTTP. This mitigates 99% of the real risk and protects users from someone next to them in a coffee shop sniffing their cookie or password information.

On February 24, 2012, at around 7:30 GMT, a DNS update by Cloudflare led to an outage affecting some websites for approximately 30 minutes. The new DNS infrastructure was designed to make updates faster but accidentally deleted the primary DNS database during the process. It took about five minutes for Cloudflare to recognize the issue, retrieve the backup, and push it to production. Some users experienced longer downtime due to cached results from their ISP's recursive DNS or issues with two data centers not taking all corrected DNS file updates correctly. The company apologized for the incident and has added safeguards to prevent similar occurrences in the future.

On Thursday, March 1, a Social Media and Community Management meetup will be held at CloudFlare HQ in San Francisco. Industry leaders from LinkedIn, TaskRabbit, SoundCloud, and CloudFlare will discuss community management best practices and social media optimization. The event starts at 6:30pm at the office located in SOMA at 3rd and Townsend. Sign up here to attend. If you have a meetup suggestion or would like to host your own meetup at CloudFlare, please comment below or email [email protected]. We hope to see you there!

On February 22, 2012, CloudFlare introduced Page Rules, a feature that allows users to customize behavior on a page-by-page basis. One of the key benefits of this new feature is enhanced caching capabilities. By default, CloudFlare conservatively caches static website objects at its edge data centers for faster delivery and reduced server load. However, many site owners requested the ability to cache HTML content as well. Page Rules enables users to specify certain pages as static so their HTML will be cached by CloudFlare. Users can create patterns to differentiate between static and dynamic content using URLs or file extensions. The Cache Everything option from the Custom Cache menu allows users to apply this caching rule, while other variations on page rules caching include overriding default cache settings for specific URLs.

In this blog post, Matthew Prince explains how to use CloudFlare's Page Rules interface for URL forwarding. He provides basic and advanced examples of setting up URL forwarding patterns and using variables. The feature was requested by early users as an alternative to the sometimes-expensive options provided by hosting providers and registrars. Troubleshooting tips are also included, such as ensuring the subdomain is enabled in CloudFlare DNS manager and recreating rules if they do not behave as expected.

CloudFlare introduces a new feature called Page Rules, which allows users to control how the platform works on their website on a page-by-page basis. This feature provides many of the most popular controls of HTACCESS with a user-friendly interface. Users can define patterns that trigger rules and use wildcards for more flexible matching. The practical example demonstrates how to disable CloudFlare Apps and performance features like Rocket Loader on the WordPress Admin panel while leaving them on for public facing pages. Free accounts include three Page Rules per domain, with an upgrade option available for Pro accounts.

In 2012, Matthew Prince discussed the growth of CloudFlare, a web performance and security company. Initially, adding new customers was slow, but over time, with patience from early adopters, they improved their services. The core value proposition of CloudFlare is that it becomes smarter and faster as more websites join, creating a community where knowledge about attacks is shared across the network. Today, CloudFlare powers more page views per month than major internet companies combined. They thank their users for their support and encourage them to apply for job opportunities at the company.

On February 14-16, Cloudflare will be participating in the Parallels Summit held at Orlando's Gaylord Palms Resort. They are offering complimentary limousine transfers from Orlando International Airport (MCO) to the event venue for attendees. Co-founders Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn will deliver presentations on Thursday at 4:45pm and Wednesday at 3:30pm respectively. Attendees are encouraged to visit Cloudflare's exhibit booth #311, where they can meet the team, receive a t-shirt, and discuss potential partnership opportunities.

On February 3, 2012, CloudFlare launched its Miami data center, marking the company's 14th facility and one of their largest. The new data center is expected to serve Central and South America, significantly reducing latency and increasing capacity in a rapidly growing region. Located within the NAP of the Americas, the Miami data center has already begun serving over 1.1 Gbps of traffic shortly after going online. As network expansion continues throughout 2012, CloudFlare plans to add more locations worldwide.

On January 26, CloudFlare joined the "World IPv6 Launch" organized by The Internet Society to encourage companies to permanently enable IPv6 for their products and services by June 6, 2012. Although CloudFlare already supports IPv6, only about 1% of the top million websites do so. The company believes that IPv6 is crucial for the internet's growth and innovation, as it prevents increasing costs and fragility associated with IPv4 address scarcity and reliance on Network Address Translation technologies. CloudFlare seeks suggestions to motivate more customers to use their Automatic IPv6 Gateway and help resolve the "chicken-or-egg" problem of encouraging ISPs and content providers to support IPv6.