Edge architecture in practice

Designing a fast, safe site with Cloudflare from DNS to Workers.

📖 Key ideas

Typical flow: DNS on Cloudflare, proxied records, Full (strict) SSL, cache rules, WAF.
Static frontend on Pages or cached at the edge; API on Workers or the origin.
Use Workers for auth checks, redirects and personalisation close to users.
Watch analytics: requests, cache ratio, threats, Core Web Vitals.
Edge limits: short CPU time, eventual consistency in KV; keep heavy jobs on the origin or queues.

💡 Real-life example: Like planning a shop chain: a central warehouse (origin), local stores (edge cache), guards (WAF) and smart staff (Workers).

Cache ratioShare of requests served from cache

Core Web VitalsGoogle's page experience metrics

Origin offloadReducing work on the origin

Edge functionCode that runs at the edge