How To Resolve SMF cache conflict with Cloudflare

There’s a simple way to resolve Simple Machine Forum (SMF) Caching issue with Cloudflare CDN.

Most webmasters use Cloudflare to reduce server resource consumption. Some reasons for using Cloudflare CDN service is to reduce site attack with the free DDOS protection when you point your host to Cloudflare.

Most CMS platform work seamless with cloudlfare platform, without experiencing any issues, despite using Caching plugins alongside cloudflare CDN.

But when it comes to SMF, the table turns. There are some technicality one needs to observe before there site runs into Caching issues that will make them to disable Cloudflare service, to correct the issues.

In this article we will explain comprehensively, about this very issues. This issue won’t likely come up on the first time of using cloudlfare with SMF, but as time goes on, your site starts bringing up an old and outdated version of your domain.

What Causes Cloudflare and SMF issues?

Caching. Wrong Caching configuration, trigger this issue.

How To Resolve

Check the cache configuration. There are two things involve, if you want your SMF site to work properly. It’s either you:

• Point directly to your host, bypassing cloudflare.

But if you want your site to run Cloudflare service, disable SMF Caching from your site Site Admin panel. To do this, follow the below instructions:

1. Visit your domain registrar account and Point your domain directly to your host using your host nameservers.
2. Wait for few minutes to see your site back on or clear browser cache to see your forum backend
3. Login your admin account and navigate to Maintenance -> Server Settings and turn off Caching.
4. Return to your domain registrar and point your site back to Cloudflare and refresh browser to see your site working properly

These should resolve the issue, incase you encounter any error while pointing back to Cloudflare, check if the Cloudflare nameservers are correct and check your CF DNS configurations for wrong configurations.

See how to resolve Cloudflare DNS misconfigurations, incase they aren’t properly configured.

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