[Max Taxable]

Originally Posted by Dave

I'm not going to scientifically test something just to prove a point. I simply checked the total loading time of all resources with and without Cloudflare (non-cached and cached versions). If your test results are different than mine then that's completely fine, but I will still be supportive of Cloudflare. On big forums every ms and saved kb matters.

Checked how? With your own browser and your own connection? Timed it how, with a stopwatch? We do objective and scientific tests not to "prove a point" but to learn objectively, what is really going on.

CF DOES increase first byte time, DOES delay the "handshake." All CDNs do. The CF people even admit it now after denying it, deflecting, making excuses and naysaying for over two years. It's the nature of the beast.

Besides that I also use Cloudflare to prevent DDoS attacks (instead of buying an expensive server with DDoS protection), gaming forums are target for such attacks all the time. I used to receive attacks weekly but since I enabled Cloudflare, 2 years ago, I haven't received a single attack.

CF is a answer for a very small percentage of vBulletin installations. But it is NOT a answer to optimization. If your site is not optimized, CF and other CDNs don't do that for you.

I don't recommend CF or any other CDN as a broad brush, fix it quick, one size fits all solution. The OP is a good example - he's only delivering 540kb to browsers, he doesn't need a CDN. He needs actual optimization help. And at that, he really doesn't need much of it. His main issue is leveraging browser cache of static assets and that's a very simple thing to do with vBulletin on Linux.

I'm not trying to knock you Dave. You believe what you believe for the reasons you believe them and I respect that. But I've fixed dozens of really ill, truly sick, vB installations over the last few years and not one of them needed a CDN to do it. It's the last thing I consider when trying to help with actual problems for folks. Fix the basic stuff first.