Putting a CDN in Front of a Content Site (Cloudflare Free Tier)

A CDN in front of a content site is one of the highest-leverage, lowest-effort performance and security moves there is. On Cloudflare's free tier, the setup takes minutes and costs nothing. Here is what it actually buys you.

What the CDN does

1. Caches static assets at the edge — CSS, JS, images — so visitors rarely hit your server for them.
2. Terminates TLS near the visitor — HTTPS handshakes happen at Cloudflare, not on your VPS.
3. Hides your origin IP — attackers see Cloudflare, not your server address.
4. Offers a small WAF / rate limiting — basic but better than nothing.

The free-tier setup

1. Add your domain to Cloudflare.
2. Let Cloudflare scan your DNS and import the records.
3. Flip the orange cloud (proxy) on the A/CNAME for your site.
4. Set TLS mode to Full (Cloudflare connects to your origin over HTTPS using a cert from certbot or the origin's own).

That is it. devprofit.net in this project runs exactly this way — DNS, CDN, and TLS are all Cloudflare, and the VPS just serves the app.

What it does not fix

• A slow origin is still slow. Caching helps assets, but your HTML is dynamic (or must be) and still comes from your server. Render fast first.
• Cached-by-mistake — if you change a page and forget the cache, visitors see the old version. Use Cache-Control and versioned assets (like ?v= on CSS) to stay sane.

The honest bottom line

Free-tier Cloudflare is the standard answer for a content site: near-free performance, free TLS, and a hidden origin. The only real question is whether you want the extra hop — and for most sites the tradeoff is a clear win. If you are comparing what the VPS behind it costs against managed hosting, the calculator below has the numbers.