Stupid bug at Cloudflare partially slows down websites, unfortunately we were affected too

When implementing something new, it’s always a bit of a rocky road. Cloudflare is currently revising their firewall options and tightening many default settings. However, there appears to have been an oversight that could almost be classified as a rookie mistake. In case anyone noticed: Since Saturday, the integration of the forum into the website was malfunctioning or not working correctly. This issue spanned from the forum overview on the homepage (widget) to the embedded threads of the comments under the articles. Initially, we mistakenly attributed the problem to the plugin and wasted time fruitlessly trying to fix it.

One often first looks for the error within their own work. But when Cloudflare suddenly classifies your own website (whose IP is known) as a foreign and unwanted bot, it’s truly beyond comprehension. As shown in the picture below, you can see our futile attempts to “whitelist” at least certain areas. We also submitted a ticket, as this situation was far from ideal. A lot of embedded content was blocked, ranging from sliders to videos. In hindsight, we were fortunate that this occurred on a relatively quiet Sunday.

At around 10:00 PM, the ghostly event finally came to an end. Reflecting on the fact that we experienced a 25% decrease in the delivery of ads (impressions), it’s daunting to even consider the impact this could have had on the larger global websites. This is likely to have been one of the key reasons why the bug was rectified so swiftly. We can only hope that Cloudflare will refrain from such unforeseen occurrences in the future. We aren’t intended to be beta testers. And this incident should serve as a vital lesson: Never place more trust in such professional services (for which we also pay) than in yourself. Doing so will spare a lot of unnecessary stress, and most importantly, it will conserve invaluable time.