Ever thought of adding various features or functionality to your websites like email newsletter subscription, social media buttons, Google Analytics and more without developer help. Well, you can now, also do much more with Cloudflare Apps.
What's Cloudflare Apps? it's a digital app store where you can find both free and paid apps to enhance the functionality, usability, and security of your website. You can install Cloudflare apps related to SEO, Marketing, E-commerce, Design, Social Media, Analytics, Communication, Security, fun etc.
Let's simplify it with an example. Assume, you have an HTML website with a large number of pages and you want to add Google Analytics to these pages. Usually, for this type of task, you need a developer and his/her effort to add the tracking code. With Cloudflare App, you can easily integrate and configure Google Analytics on your website with just a click of a button.
Why and the advantages of using Cloudflare Apps
With a growing website, you need to add lots of small things, like social media follow buttons or share buttons, newsletter signups etc. Traditionally, you need developers to help along with lots of code (CSS, HTML, and JavaScript) files to go into your website. For a WordPress website, you probably end up adding a dozen plugins. This adds additional effort to re-optimization, regular updates etc. Here, Cloudflare Apps does this thing in a second without adding any additional load to your website or your time.
- Install or disable a Cloudflare Apps in a click of a button.
- No website files to be edited or added. So, no developer effort needed.
- It takes advantage of all Cloudflare performance benefits like HTTP/2, TCP Pipelining and the Cloudflare edge.
- Instant preview of Cloudflare Apps right on your website, before actually going live.
- Can offload many resources (CSS and JavaScript) files from your website to Cloudflare's global CDN. That's a decrease in the HTTP request and faster loading of your website.
How to install Cloudflare Apps
Next, let's move on to how you can actually install Cloudflare Apps on your website. Prerequisite you need to have your domain added to Cloudflare (it's 100 per cent free) and configured the DNS correctly.
- First, log into Cloudflare and select the domain name/website you would like to install the Cloudflare Apps.
- Choose the "Apps" section from the main menu.
- Browse around and choose the Cloudflare App you want to install on your website. For example, the Google Analytics Cloudflare Apps for adding Google Analytics tracking code to all pages on your website. Or something like a Social Icons Cloudflare Apps, which will add social icon links to your site.
- You can preview the Cloudflare Apps installed on your website before going live. Also, most of the Cloudflare Apps offers certain configuration like, to pick a location, define size and colour and other options based on the apps.
- Once you are happy with the changes you can click on the "install" button to actually install the Cloudflare Apps on your site. The Cloudflare Apps will be made live on your website within a few seconds.
Uninstalling Cloudflare Apps are also an easy job. Head over to the "Apps" section in your domain and select the "Installed Apps" tab. There you will see all the installed Cloudflare Apps on your website.
- Next click on the "Edit Install" of the Cloudflare Apps you want to remove.
- There you can further edit the app to your need or just click on the "Uninstall" button to completely remove the app from your site.
Cool Cloudflare Apps to try
Most of the Cloudflare Apps are free to install and use. However, some of them are paid and offer premium functionality to your website. Some of the recommended Cloudflare Apps includes -
- Google Analytics - that adds Google Analytics tracking code to every page of your site.
- VigLink Cloudflare Apps - Generate extra revenue by converting links on your website to affiliate links.
- Google Translate - Translate your website into hundreds of languages instantly.
- CSSgram - Applies Instagram like cool filters to all images on your site.
- Cover Message - Show visitors announcements and newsletter sign-ups.
There are so many Cloudflare Apps that you can browse and install on your website for free. So, go ahead and give some of them a try. Got any doubts, write down your queries in the comment section below.