Website Performance Optimization with Cloudflare

Most teams use Cloudflare as a basic CDN and stop there. The real value is in treating it as an active infrastructure layer.

My approach starts with cache strategy. Not every route should be cached equally. Static assets: 1 year. API responses: tuned by endpoint. HTML: short TTL with purge-on-deploy. Getting this right alone reduces origin load by 40–60%.

Next: WAF tuning. Default rulesets block too broadly or too loosely. I audit traffic patterns first, then configure rules that match the actual threat model — not a generic template.

Workers are the most underutilized feature. Edge-side logic for auth checks, redirects, and A/B testing means fewer round trips to origin. Response time improvements are immediate.

The result is a system that's faster globally, cheaper to run, and significantly harder to attack.