How to implement CDN?

[xJamie]

Hello SMF community,

My question is simple -- how to implement CDN in SMF?

I am currently using CloudFlare on my website. I also want to use MaxCDN (www.maxcdn.com) for my website.

I talked to their customer service a few minutes ago and they gave me these answers:

Ivan Bukvic: Since we don't have the exact tutorial for your forrum software, there are two ways:

Ivan Bukvic: first one is to to ask developers of that software how to change urls on it - basically how to implement CDN

Ivan Bukvic: and the other one is to try with our custom solution: http://support.maxcdn.com/pullzone/custom-integration/

All your help is appreciated,

Thanks,
Jamie.

[Kindred]

I'm not the expert on this... but basically, I don't think it can be simply done.

My main question would be why?
Cloudflare is a buck useless waste of time...  I can't imaging any real need for a CDN with a forum either... (other than the things like the jQuery CDN that we're using to load jQuery in 2.1)

[xJamie]

I'm not the expert on this... but basically, I don't think it can be simply done.

My main question would be why?
Cloudflare is a buck useless waste of time...  I can't imaging any real need for a CDN with a forum either... (other than the things like the jQuery CDN that we're using to load jQuery in 2.1)

If it can be done on vB, I'm pretty sure it can be done here. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The customer service representative told me this:

Mikko Mendoza: Technically CloudFlare is not a CDN as most traditional CDNs are. They work completely differently than MaxCDN and the rest. MaxCDN does not host your DNS and if something is wrong your website wont go down completely. Plus since CloudFlare offers Free packages they get abused a lot, which is not the case with MaxCDN.

That's basically why I want to implement CDN to my forum. I also think it would optimize my forum and make it a bit faster, again - correct me if I'm wrong.

EDIT: I currently have the CloudFlare Business plan, which cost me $200/mo.

[Arantor]

CloudFlare's reliability is questionable at best, quite often it is slower than the site would have been otherwise and most of the time CF is not operating as a CDN but a traffic filter, and a bad one at that.

So, it won't optimise your forum, won't make you faster and won't even protect you if the real IP address becomes known which will happen as soon as you send an email.

[Kindred]

I believe that you are wrong....

I don't believe that either statement is correct when it comes to SMF.
The forum can't use a distributed database and the database is really the only thing that matters (and the only thing causing performance hits to the site -- the files just call and display the information from the database - so distributing those will have no appreciable affect on your site performance.

and, as I said, Cloudflare for a forum is a complete waste of time *(and in your case money)
If you use it for other parts of your site, then it may be worth it... but not for the forum

[xJamie]

I believe that you are wrong....

I don't believe that either statement is correct when it comes to SMF.
The forum can't use a distributed database and the database is really the only thing that matters (and the only thing causing performance hits to the site -- the files just call and display the information from the database - so distributing those will have no appreciable affect on your site performance.

and, as I said, Cloudflare for a forum is a complete waste of time *(and in your case money)
If you use it for other parts of your site, then it may be worth it... but not for the forum

Thank you for correcting me, and I have a fairly amount of other questions, but let's not get off-topic, shall we?

Basically, my goal is to emulate the forum, make it optimized and fast, bleeding edge speed. Unfortunately for me, there are people who love to attack my website with a distributed denial of service attack/other layer 4 and/or layer 7 attacks. That's exactly why I have to hide the IP address of my website and my forum members.. That is basically why I'm using CloudFlare.

If you know a better solution that does not slow down the performance of my forum, I would greatly appreciate it.

Here is the link to my forum: http://pwnxile.cm/index.php

[Kindred]

As Arantor already pointed out...  they can still figure out your IP and access it directly bypassing cloudflare completely...

[xJamie]

As Arantor already pointed out...  they can still figure out your IP and access it directly bypassing cloudflare completely...

How can I prevent this?

[Arantor]

Implementing third party email (which is a nightmare and likely to get you flagged as a spammer)

Also, is this actually a real threat or a perceived one?

[xJamie]

Implementing third party email (which is a nightmare and likely to get you flagged as a spammer)

Also, is this actually a real threat or a perceived one?

My CloudFlare MX records are pointing to Google's SMTP Gmail.

How can it get me flagged as a spammer?

[Arantor]

Do the forum emails go *out* via Gmail?

As for being a spammer/not being a spammer, the entire trail needs to match up to avoid being flagged as an open spam relay... CF's MX records might be right but are your domain's MX records right too?

[xJamie]

Do the forum emails go *out* via Gmail?

As for being a spammer/not being a spammer, the entire trail needs to match up to avoid being flagged as an open spam relay... CF's MX records might be right but are your domain's MX records right too?

but are your domain's MX records right too?

What do you mean? Can you please be more specific?

[kat]

How would you check those, ‽? (Just curious)