Possible Cloudflare issues and suggestions on how to address them
The ShortPixel Image Optimizer (SPIO) plugin works well with Cloudflare. However, if you have problems using them together, please check these suggestions.
Firewall, Rate limiting, and Security level sections
Please log in to your Cloudflare account and check the Firewall rules, Rate limiting rules and Security Level sections to see if the current settings might prevent our servers from accessing your website.
Here is Cloudflare's Rate Limiting documentation and here are the Cloudflare settings sections we recommend you review:
IP Access Rules
Make sure you whitelist our IPs (see here) and also make sure there are no country-specific restrictions for Germany (this is where our servers are located).
Remove the security captcha
Remove the security captchaIn some cases, we have found that there is a security captcha that needs to be disabled in your Cloudflare account, otherwise our optimization cloud will not be able to access the images.
Add your Cloudflare details in SPIO
Add your Cloudflare details in the appropriate tab in the ShortPixel plugin settings. Learn more here.
Under Attack Mode
If your website is in Under Attack Mode, our optimization cloud will most likely not be able to access your images to optimize them.
Please make sure to disable this mode before trying image optimization again - of course, only when you are no longer under attack :)
Cloudflare and WebP delivery
Cloudflare, a CDN, does not work well with the WebP/AVIF delivery method "Without altering the page code (via .htaccess)". In fact, if you have a free plan with Cloudflare, this solution does not work at all. You can read more about it here. So, if you want to deliver your WebP/AVIF files with ShortPixel without any problems, we recommend you to use the "Using the <PICTURE> tag syntax" method. You can find more information here: How to serve WebP files using SPIO
If this method does not meet your needs, a good alternative is to use our new ShortPixel Adaptive Images image optimization plugin. Here are more details about how ShortPixel Adaptive Images (SPAI) compares to ShortPixel Image Optmizer (SPIO).