Cloud Flare - Block spam, proxies, cyber attacks, and most unwanted cyber bots
 

I am not 100% sure where I should post something, when I want to share something with this community. Or if even sharing such information is allowed. If this is in the wrong forum or sharing resource information isn't idea here... Please let me know for future reference's.

I recently have discovered a free services (they have a paid version too), which has stop almost all forum spam, blocked almost all proxies, blocked unwanted cyber bots, and even help block someone from cyber attacking my community.

So I thought I'd share the link.

http://www.cloudflare.com

They basically route all your traffic through their DNS Servers. And it doesn't block valid users out right... If a valid user does something that could be thought of as "high risk", they are brought to a challenge page (most to confirm they are human). They require you to make 1 small template edit.

http://www.cloudflare.com/wiki/VBulletin_3.8.4

They say this edit applies to vBulletin 3.8.4, but I found it useful on my copy on 4.1.1 also.

Not sure if I'm doing a good job on explaining what they do. But they have a few videos for others to see and learn what they offer.

Basically they act like a giant proxy server, your dns [for your site] points to thier servers, so a connecting client connects to them, and they then connect to your site. Thats why you need to make the edits to class core, without them all traffic to your site would appear to originate from their servers, so they pass on the original ip as an http variable.

Thank you for explaining this a little better then maybe I did.

Their modification did seem to make my site a little fast though.

I also find your modification (Proxy to Real IP Conversion) helps in so many ways.

^
Cloud Flare IP > Proxy IP > Real IP

If I blocked proxies I'd lose half my traffic...

Not a good option if most of your members are from Asia.

It doesn't block but that message can get annoying. I know I get annoyed.

There really should be no real setup once you click that button in cpanel.

What are some issues you are having?

KevinL is right, see below. furthermore if your hosted w/ URLJet your not required to edit the files. mod_cloudflare handles that for you since they use litespeed and have it passing the originating ip ;). Not to mention some things like IP's from your who's online and other will simply disappear if you make those edits :erm:.

So as Kevin said, enable it via cPanel and let it fly!

I've said it once and I'll say it again, the vbulletin question and answer option kills 99.5% of spammers. This is because most spammers are bots. Not real people. So every now and then, you might get the occasional spammer. But atleast they'll be human.

Yep. You would have to add a 301 redirect from non-www --> www

You can put this in your htaccess:

That should route it correctly for you.

I've been saying that too. I have Q&A set up on my site. No spam problems really. I get human spammers but they are rare.

Cloud Flare isn't awesome to me because of spam-prevention though. It's awesome because it's a Content Delivery Network. My host says it has more reach than maxCDN which is what vbSEO uses. I need CloudFlare because for one, I don't live near my server and two, my site won't even load on my moderator's cell phone because she lives overseas. Having a CDN means having a faster site and a better search ranking. My site's ranking went down when my site slowed down. I need this and some other optimization besides mods like dboptimize lite to increase the speed of my site.

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They fixed it awhile ago thank you! I see your host has softalicious. I just now discovered that on my server the other day. I'm mad no one told me. Do you ever get requests from your customers about integration with the free scripts within softalicious? Integration as in, dual-login. Single-sign on kinda deal.

I actually work for CloudFlare and thought I would jump in. We have a number of datacenters in Asia & things should be fine for most site visitors. Are you having issues with the challenge page/captcha?

Cloudflare has a challenge? :confused:

Customize Challenge Page

Customize the challenge page. You can customize colors, copy and other elements of the page. Changes may take up to 30 minutes to propagate across the entire CloudFlare system.

Are you talking about Cloudflare or RocketLoader? :confused:

Yes, most of my members used to see the page and used to experience an issue with the captcha so I removed it, as my target market was mostly kids and teenagers (they found it a nuisance as they didn't "get" the captcha and also as studies indicate have really low attention spans). even though I can white list their IP but random guests would be an issue as I didn't want to lose any potential members. I'm aware it can speed up things many times fold and it also makes the site safer. No doubt the advantages of having Cloudflare > than not having Cloudflare.

This is a beta feature that can potentially break some Javascript. If you see any issues with Rocket Loader after turning on, turn it off and report the bug to us.

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You can also turn your security settings to "Esstentially Off" by going to:
Settings->CloudFlare settings->Basic Security Level->Desired Level.

Essentially Off will only block the worst of the worst.

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Is Development Mode working now? Rocket Loader isn't directly tied into Development Mode.

That was me. I just want to see the datacenter you're hitting so I can make sure the rules that allow Development Mode and Purge cache to work are actually working.

No worries. I'm in the same boat with work hours....send it to us when you have time so I can check it out.

Is that mod specific to VB only? Our beta features, even if they can cause some issues at times, actually work regardless of platform.

8th, you still using cloudflare? I am looking to use it too..
How you like it so far?

Yes I am and I learned I have to wait at least 10 minutes after turning development mode on for it to actually work. But it's great for my overseas members because the site loads much faster for em and even loads faster for peeps stateside as well. I haven't heard any member complaints either so I guess I'll ignore the webpagetest.org results for now. It's also more accurate at tracking website statistics than whenever you install google analytics into your forum.

So if you have something you like to install like apture, vigilinks or google analytics, webmaster tools etc, best do it through CloudFlare.

Hey damon will CloudFlare consider adding Tynt?

Sorry about the delay in responding...I just got back from HostingCon.

Tynt seems like a fairly cool service. Have you recommended to Tynt that they should look at becoming an app partner?

Alright, I'll mention it to our apps' guy.

I tried Cloudflare for a week. After receiving feedback from our users and weighing the cons and pros it provides, we elected it wasn't for us.

Secondary problems were encountered when trying to cancel the service. Easy to sign up (easy to find buttons), but had a somewhat difficult time cancelling the service. (no buttons at the time to uninstall/cancel service.) Which led me searching through emails to find a point of contact, then waiting for a response, meanwhile my community was experiencing some residual hiccups from the service as I continued communications with a tech via emails over the next 36hrs to finalize cancellation.

To their defense, the service was in beta at the time. Perhaps the ability to simply cancel the service on the user's end has been added or at least somewhat streamlined by this time. (however I was under the impression this wasn't in their immediate lineup; making it easy for users to cancel isn't exactly good business sense right? *nudge - poke*

When did you try the service? We've made a ton of changes over the past few months that have made things much more stable than they were during our beta period last year.

"(however I was under the impression this wasn't in their immediate lineup; making it easy for users to cancel isn't exactly good business sense right? *nudge - poke*"
The primary reason that we don't have an easy way to cancel is we don't want someone to take their site down by mistake. If we allowed people to easily delete a domain from CloudFlare, without the user first changing their nameservers back to their original registrar, it would cause major issues for the site owner.

We recently switched to cloudflare to mitigate a ddos attack and it worked great. Other than an increase in the speed of the website users have not even noticed it was there. It has been less than a week but in that time I am running with medium security and not having any problems.