vbarry Posted March 7, 2023 Share Posted March 7, 2023 I've just moved from wordpress to Squarespace. I was using Cloudflare there, is there a benefit to using it now that I'm at Squarespace (my URL still with GoDaddy)? Does Squarespace use their own similar CDN and security features? Link to comment
Ziggy Posted March 7, 2023 Share Posted March 7, 2023 Try this guide as a starting point: https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/213469948-Using-Cloudflare-with-Squarespace webbroi and tuanphan 2 Please like and upvote if my comments were helpful to you. Cheers! Zygmunt Spray Squarespace Website Designer Contact me: https://squarefortytwo.com Hire me on Upwork! 🔌 Ghost Squarespace Plugins (Referral link) 📈 SEO Space (Referral link) ⬛ SquareWebsites Plugins (Referral link) 🔲 SQSP Themes (Referral link) ✨ Spark Plugin (Referral link) 🖼️ Gallery Lightbox Plugin (Referral link) ☕ Did I help? Buy me a coffee? Link to comment
tuanphan Posted March 8, 2023 Share Posted March 8, 2023 I also use Cloudflare for a few sites, but for the sake of ease of editing records, and being able to manage domains purchased from multiple registrars on a single dashboard. webbroi and Beyondspace 1 1 Email me if you have need any help (free, of course.). Answer within 24 hours. Or send to forum message Contact Customer Care - Learn CSS - Buy me a coffee (thank you!) Link to comment
manos Posted May 8, 2023 Share Posted May 8, 2023 I'm curious to know if any website owners use Cloudflare to improve their website's speed, especially for mobile devices. If you have experience with Cloudflare, I would appreciate your feedback. Have you encountered any issues, and was the setup process easy? Link to comment
paul2009 Posted May 8, 2023 Share Posted May 8, 2023 (edited) On 5/8/2023 at 11:51 AM, manos said: I'm curious to know if any website owners use Cloudflare to improve their website's speed You're unlikely to see substantive benefit as many of the features offered by Cloudflare are now built directly into Squarespace 7.1. That's not to say that it can't offer benefits, especially to corporates, but the additional complexity is unlikely to help the majority of Squarespace users who are typically small or creative businesses and already benefit from the great range of built-in features. On the performance side, Squarespace provide website caching to improve performance and they host files on a fast global content delivery network (CDN) and they now defer loading of JavaScript, where this is possible. There are some scripts that cannot be deferred (because they are essential for the content to be rendered) so these will always be flagged by third party tools that aren't "Squarespace-aware", even if the situation cannot be changed. Squarespace also has many security features built-in, that are likely to satisfy the majority of Squarespace customers, including SSL (with HSTS), clickjacking protection and extensive DDOS protection. What aspects of your mobile performance are you concerned about? Which Cloudflare services are you considering to improve them? Edited May 9, 2023 by paul2009 webbroi, FluffCreativeStudio and manos 2 1 Me: I'm Paul, a SQSP user for >18 yrs & Circle Leader since 2017. I value honesty, transparency, diversity and good design ♥. Work: Founder of SF.DIGITAL. We provide high quality original extensions to supercharge your Squarespace website. Content: Views and opinions are my own. Links in my posts may refer to my own SF.DIGITAL products or may be affiliate links. Forum advice is completely free. You can thank me by selecting a feedback emoji. Buying a coffee is generous but optional. 🌴 I'm on vacation. If you're replying to one of my posts, I may not see your reply for a few weeks. Link to comment
manos Posted May 9, 2023 Share Posted May 9, 2023 In my opinion, Cloudflare's Skyrocket service maybe has the potential to address persistent issues that many users encounter when analyzing their website's performance with PageSpeed Insights. FluffCreativeStudio 1 Link to comment
FluffCreativeStudio Posted May 9, 2023 Share Posted May 9, 2023 Definitely interesting to hear both of your thoughts! I had just been wondering about this. And the info from @paul2009 really helps clarify all that SQSPS is doing in this realm. That being said - it is daunting when you perform an SEO audit and get all those red dings! That depth of SEO is outside of my scope - and I am always curious if getting the green light there is more about appeasing a client that is ranking focuses or if is it truly affecting the rankings of the site? @manos....especially when the bulk of my clients are small local businesses, not corporate. Beyondspace 1 Link to comment
MakkPress Posted May 9, 2023 Share Posted May 9, 2023 (edited) Squarespace websites can sometimes be slow to load. This can be frustrating for both you and your visitors, and it can even have a negative impact on your search engine rankings. The good news is that there are solutions available to help fix Squarespace loading speed issues, and one of them is websitespeedy.com. Here's how we can help: Fixing render blocking issues: One of the main reasons why Squarespace websites can be slow to load is because of render blocking. This is when your website's resources, such as JavaScript and CSS files, are loaded before the page's content, which can cause delays in the page rendering. At websitespeedy.com, we can help fix this issue by optimizing your website's code and rearranging the loading order of your resources, so that the page content loads first, and then the resources. Implementing lazy loading: Another way we can help fix Squarespace loading speed issues is by implementing lazy loading. This is a technique that delays the loading of non-critical resources, such as images and videos, until they are needed. This can help reduce the amount of data that needs to be loaded upfront, which can speed up your website's loading time. At websitespeedy.com, we can implement lazy loading on your Squarespace website and fix render blocking issues using a third-party script, which is easy to install and configure. By fixing render blocking issues and implementing lazy loading, websitespeedy.com can help improve the loading speed of your Squarespace website. This can lead to a better user experience for your visitors, improved search engine rankings, and ultimately, increased conversions and revenue for your business. So if you're struggling with slow loading times on your Squarespace website, don't hesitate to reach out to websitespeedy.com. Our team of experts can work with you to identify the root cause of your website's loading speed issues and provide tailored solutions to help fix them. Edited May 17, 2023 by MakkPress spelling mistake FluffCreativeStudio and Beyondspace 1 1 Founder of MakkPress technologies and Website Speedy to improve Squarespace speed Web Experience and Marketing Consultant Building with SquareSpace since 2012 Contact us or hire us Link to comment
manos Posted May 10, 2023 Share Posted May 10, 2023 @FluffCreativeStudio glad you join! 15 hours ago, FluffCreativeStudio said: That depth of SEO is outside of my scope - and I am always curious if getting the green light there is more about appeasing a client that is ranking focuses or if is it truly affecting the rankings of the site? Maybe I am wrong but I think all available data suggests that Google uses Pagespeed Insights as a ranking factor. Scoring 100/100 does not guarantee a top spot on the SERPs, but in today's SEO landscape, we are primarily optimizing for Google. Even if my website is lightning fast, if Google does not perceive it as such, what is the point? Mobile page speed has been a ranking factor for Google since 2018, and we can see that design is striving for websites that are fully mobile-optimized, not just mobile-friendly or responsive. Therefore, I believe that mobile Pagespeed Insights is a significant factor today, despite some claims from SEO experts against it. I am fully aware that relevance is still the number one ranking factor but I believe if all things equal smaller players lose some competitive edge. So, I am looking to find solutions like Cloudflare. Beyondspace and FluffCreativeStudio 1 1 Link to comment
Beyondspace Posted July 23 Share Posted July 23 (edited) I connected Cloudflare to some of my sites and share some insights about benefits you can gain: - The speed is not quite improve since Squarespace is already pretty fast, but I can take advantage of other features - Workers Routes: Cloudlare worker can be used with your Squarespace website, I used them as a backend to my site, it has some notable feature such as HTML Rewriter: which will let you modify the site content before deliver to visitors, now I can use Worker to manipulate the Squarespace Image markup to create an image pipline that deliver optimized Images and next-gen format such as webp without chaging the website source code (which is not possible) or manually re-upload images with suitable (which is not possible as well since SQS does not support webp), I used to have a Javascript solution but it is not fast enough to replace all images I tried to manipulate Google font css and /static.css to load async without blocking the main page Another use cases of HTML Writer is you can insert nofollow tag for links if they contain matched words like ?ref or ?via, stop relying on Javascript solution to add URL params to the end of the referral URLs Cloudflare Image Resizing is also worth a try, it creates an image pipline to your site and the HTML Rewriter can come to play by changing image src with prefix like /cdn-cgi/image/format=auto/ , this feature support webp out of the box and cost 0.5 per 1000 unique transformations Geo retriction: confirmed worked with Cloudflare when connect to Squarespace All of these feature come with free of charge! You can choose Free plan of Cloudflare to connect your domain, and Free tier of Cloudflare worker allow upto 100k requests a day Though the potential is huge, I still can see some issues - Setting up Cloudflare requires it to become your DNS manager, though you can keep your domain registrar unchanged. For instance, I used Namecheap to manage my domain, connected it to Cloudflare, and then connected the domain to Squarespace. It took about three days for the SSL to become available. - Now you join Cloudflare and if there is issue with Cloudflare, you website is affected too! I don't say Squarespace is more stable, but now your site is depending on a 3rd party - It's like your site now have two version, the built-in domain example.squarespace.com still functioning, but your primary domain now under Cloudflare. For example the source code manipulation I talked before will not available on the built-in domain Edited July 23 by Beyondspace BeyondSpace - Squarespace Website Developer 🖼️ Lightbox Studio (Enable Pinch/Zoom on lightbox, video lightbox and much more) 🗓️ Delivery Date Picker (Squarespace Date picker form field) 💫 Gallery block 7.1 workaround 🥳 No-code customisations for Squarespace (Browse +100 Spark plugin customisations) 🥳 Freemium Squarespace Widget Templates (Browse +1000 Elfsight Templates) If you find my answer useful, let's leave a like or upvote so others with the same issue can find their solution. Thank you! Link to comment
Beyondspace Posted July 23 Share Posted July 23 On 3/8/2023 at 3:51 PM, tuanphan said: I also use Cloudflare for a few sites, but for the sake of ease of editing records, and being able to manage domains purchased from multiple registrars on a single dashboard. Have you connect these domains to Squarespace? Did the SSL issued correctly? Thanks BeyondSpace - Squarespace Website Developer 🖼️ Lightbox Studio (Enable Pinch/Zoom on lightbox, video lightbox and much more) 🗓️ Delivery Date Picker (Squarespace Date picker form field) 💫 Gallery block 7.1 workaround 🥳 No-code customisations for Squarespace (Browse +100 Spark plugin customisations) 🥳 Freemium Squarespace Widget Templates (Browse +1000 Elfsight Templates) If you find my answer useful, let's leave a like or upvote so others with the same issue can find their solution. Thank you! Link to comment
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