How to increase acess speed in China?

html5syt

My forum URL is https://bravely.freeflarum.com and https://www.bravely.pp.ua(my custom domain)

I’m a manager from China, and many of my users told me that the forum speed is too low and usually can’t load after 30s.It caused many problems on propagate my forum.

I found that the freeflarum uses Cloudflare as CDN, and there’s a way to increase speed without any money: use some magic domain (there is a screenshort from my dns settings:), and there’s a tour:https://dooo.ng/archives/1701171631107
If you don’t understand them,it’s not necessary.But when I use this method, I receive a error 1001.

So I have 2 problem:
First, Is there have other ways to increase speed in China? Such as something in Cloudflare Pro or up?
Second, Is the “custom domain” uses ssl-tls/custom-hostnames in Cloudflare? If yes, why I can’t use my way?
(I know this problem have some relevances to Cloudflare self, and I will ask the same question later on offical Cloudflare support forum.
And I test this way can use of my other sites.)

SKevo

I apologize for the slow access to forum for Chinese based users. This has been a known issue at FreeFlarum that I haven’t had time to properly resolve yet, unfortunately. This will be looked at in the future though (I assume during this summer). For now, the Cloudflare proxy for all forums that is being used by FreeFlarum was an attempt to mitigate the slowness of the loading times for Chinese visitors, however that did not have the desired effect of visibly speeding up the load times. An alternative approach will be required, one that I am not yet fully aware of. Thank you for the link to the possible solution though - I will study it in more detail later. I think it will provide me with some inspiration on how to tackle this issue.

html5syt Is there have other ways to increase speed in China? Such as something in Cloudflare Pro or up?

I have heard that Cloudflare has some services that can speed up your website, but because FreeFlarum is a free and community provided service maintained in my spare time, it is unfortunately not possible for FreeFlarum to operate outside the Free tier that Cloudflare currently provides.

An individual forum might be able to properly point its domain towards the Cloudflare nameservers and utilize the services available in their paid tiers, however I have never had experience with these services, so I can’t tell if they will actually help you speed up your forum. I strongly recommend you to discuss this particular thing with Cloudflare’s support before paying for something you wouldn’t need in the end.

html5syt Second, Is the “custom domain” uses ssl-tls/custom-hostnames in Cloudflare? If yes, why I can’t use my way?

The SSL certificates are obtained by FreeFlarum through third-party certificate management services, such as Let’s Encrypt and ZeroSSL (through the Caddy webserver), after you successfully link your custom domain to FreeFlarum. This process is automatic and should yield valid certificate, if the necessary conditions are met.

Your custom domain seems to be set up properly, and the SSL certificate seems to be valid. If you are perhaps asking whether you can use your own SSL certificate instead, then this is unfortunately not possible at FreeFlarum at the moment, and there are no plans to implement such feature in the near future.

html5syt

Damn GFW, let me do a lot more things in optimizing access speed than other countries!!!

html5syt

SKevo Thanks for your attentive reply.
I will test forum after, and I’m sorry about my poor English.
I found that the Cloudflare told me they’re not found my bravely.pp.ua domain in their server from the error, and now I’m trying to make Cloudflare record my domain (should use some irregular ways).

SKevo An individual forum might be able to properly point its domain towards the Cloudflare nameservers and utilize the services available in their paid tiers, however I have never had experience with these services, so I can’t tell if they will actually help you speed up your forum. I strongly recommend you to discuss this particular thing with Cloudflare’s support before paying for something you wouldn’t need in the end

I have some questions:
If you only use Cloudflare for free, how do you achieve the cname to forum by only one domain? By API or other?

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And if you want to know more information about increase Cloudflare speed, you can search “Cloudflare 优选域名” on Google or ask some Chinese experts in Bypassing GFW on YouTube or Telegram, they’re very familiar on increase Cloudflare speed in China.

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I always don’t know why China government build this GFW!!!It really caused so many problems and many Chinese include me are disliked it!

SKevo

html5syt If you only use Cloudflare for free, how do you achieve the cname to forum by only one domain? By API or other?

The domain linking process is mainly coordinated by FreeFlarum. The cname.freeflarum.com host is not proxied through Cloudflare, meaning that domains pointing to this URL should not get the “1014 CNAME Cross User Banned” error message (that would be the case if cname.freeflarum.com was proxied through Cloudflare).

FreeFlarum modifies its webserver configuration of the forum that linked its domain to reflect the hostname change and allow the web traffic to flow through properly - this part has actually nothing to do with Cloudflare, and FreeFlarum does not utilize the Cloudflare API directly in its backend code in any way.

Please, view the documentation for more information on the domain link process: https://docs.freeflarum.com/zh/教程/自定义域名/

html5syt And if you want to know more information about increase Cloudflare speed, you can search “Cloudflare 优选域名” on Google or ask some Chinese experts in Bypassing GFW on YouTube or Telegram, they’re very familiar on increase Cloudflare speed in China.

Thank you. I do not understand Chinese at all unfortunately, but I will ask some friends to see if they know more.

html5syt

SKevo Thank you. I do not understand Chinese at all unfortunately, but I will ask some friends to see if they know more

You can ask them by English directly, or use Translate.

SKevo FreeFlarum modifies its webserver configuration of the forum that linked its domain to reflect the hostname change and allow the web traffic to flow through properly - this part has actually nothing to do with Cloudflare, and FreeFlarum does not utilize the Cloudflare API directly in its backend code in any way.

I think it’s like some shared webhosts.They’re use the same way.

SKevo “1014 CNAME Cross User Banned”

It’s a awful problem, and I see the same error on my r2 bucket (use the same way as forum)

SKevo

html5syt I think it’s like some shared webhosts.They’re use the same way.

Yes, it’s the same principle.

html5syt SKevo “1014 CNAME Cross User Banned”

It’s a awful problem, and I see the same error on my r2 bucket (use the same way as forum)

Have you tried turning off Cloudflare proxy for your CNAME? Also, just to confirm, your domain is now properly accessible under https://www.bravely.pp.ua for you, correct?

html5syt

SKevo Have you tried turning off Cloudflare proxy for your CNAME?

I never use Cloudflare for my end domain (pp.ua), because I should use some other DNS provider that can back different result for each web provider (China Unicom and more), and provide the origin CNAME record to Cloudflare SaaS fallback origin for check.

SKevo Also, just to confirm, your domain is now properly accessible under https://www.bravely.pp.ua for you, correct?

Now I can use it if I use VPN to abroad (Abide by acess CNAME directly).

aaaaaaaaaa……

html5syt

I solve this problem!
Now I set my domain that have 4 NS record, 2 from Cloudflare, 2 from 京东云（jdcloud), so I can set different CDN optimization domain(magic domain). It’s work! But you should change these “magic” domain if they’re don’t no longer work!
You can find the magic domain on YouTube or Google.

And I write a flow chart: