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Admin Tools

#27248 Setting up Cloudflare

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
This is a public ticket

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Environment Information

Joomla! version
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PHP version
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Admin Tools version
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Latest post by nicholas on Tuesday, 07 March 2017 05:53 CST

Friday, 03 March 2017 15:27 CST

bobpit
Hi

I am using Cloudflare and I have several questions:

1) I am reading in this guide ( http://myawesomejoomlawebsite.com/the-complete-guide-to-using-cloudflare-with-joomla.html ) that I should exclude the Administrator directory from CF. But I also want to use the Admin Tools feature: "Change administrator login directory to". How do I do this?

2) About GZIP. I have enabled Joomla GZIP. But Admin Tools Pro offers a GZIP feature too (htaccess maker -> Automatically compress static resources). Then Cloudflare does GZIP. Do I let them all on? Isn't it better to only have the first one (Joomla GZIP) on?

3) Same about minify html, css, javascripts. I have the purity III template and the files they are combined/minified. I also have JCH Optimize that can do this once more. I am sure somewhere Admin tools does it. Then Cloudflare does it again. What is the best combination for all these?

Sunday, 05 March 2017 15:09 CST

nicholas
1. Joomla's administrator directory cannot change. The only thing we do is "capture" the "renamed" directory in the same way Joomla handles SEF URLs, i.e. URLs which don't physically exist on the server. When you access this special URL we create a secure, short lived token. Then you are redirected to a URL in the /administrator directory which reads this token and grants you access to the login page. If you try to access the /administrator directory without this token and without having previously been granted access you are redirected to the front-end.

So all you have to do is add two rules. First the *yoursitename.whatever/administrator/* per the tutorial to exclude the real backend from caching. Then add *yoursitename.whatever/renamed where renamed is the "renamed" administrator folder you entered in Admin Tools.

2. Joomla's GZip feature applies to HTML pages generated dynamically by Joomlal. Admin Tools' feature, as it explicitly states, compresses static resources: CSS, JS etc; real files which exist on your server.

However both options only make sense when serving content directly FROM your server TO your client. In your intended setup your server serves content only to CloudFlare. CloudFlare serves content to your clients. Therefore it only matters what you set up in CloudFlare.

3. Nope, we have nothing to do with it. Please ask JCH Optimize for support.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Sunday, 05 March 2017 16:27 CST

bobpit
>>>
Joomla's GZip feature applies to HTML pages generated dynamically by Joomlal. Admin Tools' feature, as it explicitly states, compresses static resources: CSS, JS etc; real files which exist on your server.
<<<
So I need both. Ok, got it.

>>>
However both options only make sense when serving content directly FROM your server TO your client. In your intended setup your server serves content only to CloudFlare. CloudFlare serves content to your clients. Therefore it only matters what you set up in CloudFlare.
<<<
Yes, I understand. However I prefer to optimize at the source (server). Then use less optimization option from CF.

Thank you.

About ticket #27249. This is the second time in a month that I google and find old documentation that confuses me: https://www.akeebabackup.com/documentation/admin-tools/ch02s12.html

Can't you remove or mark those pages as being obsolete?

Monday, 06 March 2017 01:30 CST

nicholas
Regarding GZip: you need to enabled neither. The files will NOT be served by your server. They will be served by CloudFlare.

If a file does not exist in CloudFlare's cache or the cache is expired (rare) it's like this:

YOUR SERVER ----> CLOUDFLARE ----> CLIENT

If a file already exists in CloudFlare's cache (99% or more of your traffic) it's like this:

CLOUDFLARE ----> CLIENT

Therefore the only GZip option that matters is CloudFlare's. Do remember that the entire point of using CloudFlare is to outsource traffic handling to their servers instead of yours. If you don't understand how CloudFlare and transparent proxies in general work I'd suggest reading a few articles about it before using CloudFlare. Knowing the mode of operation will save you massive headaches in the future.

regarding ticket #27249 I know that Google finds old pages. Here's the problem we have: these pages are linked to by the software's Help buttons in older versions. These versions are still in use. Yes, there are people still using Joomla! 1.5 and 2.5... In any case these pages are slated for removal once we launch our new support section sometime in April.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Tuesday, 07 March 2017 03:28 CST

bobpit
Thank you for the suggestions Nikola.

Offloading traffic is not an issue, traffic is not very high. I use Cloudflare mostly to speedup the loading of the website by bringing the files closer to the local viewers. So e visitor from Germany will take the files from a German CF server instead of the origin host in USA.

I do understand that if I gzip and cache on my server, then all I am doing is speeding up this path:
YOUR SERVER ----> CLOUDFLARE

One reason to use these tools on my server is when I disable Cloudflare because it may misbehaves or for testing, then it does help.

Also, I am reading that Cloudflare does not cache dynamic content from joomla (the html part) (see https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200172516-What-file-extensions-does-CloudFlare-cache-for-static-content- ). So from what I understand, for a joomla site the following path works in every page view:
YOUR SERVER ----> CLOUDFLARE ----> CLIENT

Therefore I think that it does matter to use Joomla gzip. For the same reason I should use Joomla cache (or any other cache extension).

The dynamic content (html) is sped up by Railgun (cloudflare), which I tried and gave about 30% boost.

Is my logic correct?

Tuesday, 07 March 2017 05:53 CST

nicholas
I use Cloudflare mostly to speedup the loading of the website by bringing the files closer to the local viewers.


Um, uh, well, that's the definition of off-loading the delivery of pages and static content. It's not your server that serves these files, it's CloudFlare's servers (edge nodes). You also told me that you are offloading the content loading at the end of your reply, so...

Therefore I think that it does matter to use Joomla gzip. For the same reason I should use Joomla cache (or any other cache extension).


This is incorrect. However this question is completely off-topic to our support. Please contact CloudFlare for further support.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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