Understanding what is and is not stored.
CACHED BY DEFAULT
Static files: images, stylesheets, scripts, fonts, documents.
These are identified by file extension and are served from Cloudflare without asking us.
NOT CACHED BY DEFAULT
HTML pages. Every page request still reaches us and runs your application.
This surprises people who expect Cloudflare to make their site fast and find it unchanged.
WHY
Dynamic pages differ per visitor. Caching them wrongly serves one visitor's content to another, which on a shop is a serious problem.
MAKING CLOUDFLARE CACHE PAGES
A page rule or cache rule can cache HTML, with exclusions for cart, checkout, account and admin.
That must be configured deliberately and tested carefully.
WHAT THIS MEANS PRACTICALLY
Cloudflare in its default configuration reduces bandwidth and speeds up static assets.
To speed up page delivery, you need either server-side caching on our end, which you should have anyway, or careful HTML caching at Cloudflare.
THE SENSIBLE ORDER
Server-side caching first. Cloudflare on top of it.
