Reverse proxy integration – Cloudflare – Visitor IP’s

  • Resolved PauluaP

    (@pauluap)


    4 years, 1 month ago

    Hi.

    One of the features listed is: Reverse proxy integration via Nginx. Could you please elaborate what that is?

    An old Cloudflare blog post states:

    The W3TC plugin now also will also ensure that your visitors’ IP addresses appear correctly in WordPress without your needing the CloudFlare WordPress plugin or the mod_cloudflare Apache module.

    Is W3TC still able to make it so a WordPress site can be proxied with Cloudflare, yet still serve up the visitors real IP (instead of Cloudflare IP’s) for added functionality via the website?

    Normally it seems the “proxy protocol” would be needed with Cloudflare to do this (but it’s only available in Cloudflare’s Enterprise Edition).

    Another method seems to be Nginx restore real IP address with the ngx_http_realip_module … (https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/nginx-restore-real-ip-address-when-behind-a-reverse-proxy/) not sure if W3TC does something similar?

    Thank you.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Contributor Marko Vasiljevic

    (@vmarko)

    Hello @pauluap

    thank you for your question and I am happy to assist you with this.
    W3 Total Cache does not do anything with IPs. When Cloudflare is setup then the Cloudflare IPs will be shown as needed. Using Reverse Proxy is a different matter. You can try the suggestion in the provider article. With W3 Total Cache you can Enable reverse proxy caching via varnish. However, when using Cloudflare this may not be the best solution.
    Thanks!

    Thread Starter PauluaP

    (@pauluap)

    Thanks for the reply, Marko.

    Just trying to understand, as per this quote from Cloudflare’s older blog post:

    The W3TC plugin now also will also ensure that your visitors’ IP addresses appear correctly in WordPress without your needing the CloudFlare WordPress plugin or the mod_cloudflare Apache module.

    Does W3TC no longer have this ability?

    Thanks.

    Plugin Contributor Marko Vasiljevic

    (@vmarko)

    Hello @pauluap

    Thank you for your question. You don’t need mod_cludflare when using W3 Total Cache as W3TC ensures that original visitor addresses will appear in your server logs.
    Thanks!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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