What exactly is a RailGun?
We have all heard of CloudFlare and know that it caches the static part of the site to speed up the loading of the site itself. It really is and accelerates up to 200%. So CloudFlare speeds up two-thirds of the content. But what about the dynamic part of the site?
The dynamic part of the site is actually all the php code and pages that process and display the static part of the site. Plugins like wp total cache "record" versions of the site as html for each post, for example, and then display them as static, and that really helps, but it's still not enough.
RailGun can only be used by CloudFlare partners because every hosting provider where we are listed.
It is an additional software on the server that allows content to be sent directly to the CloudFlare server with one highly compressed connection, and thus as if your dynamic part is located on the CloudFlare server and served from there. So it is not the caching of the dynamic part, but a special connection between the hosting provider and the CloudFlare server that enables faster serving.
Therefore, it means that literally the entire site is loaded from every part of the world equally fast, even though the hosting is in one place. RailGun compresses dynamic content and thus passes the content through its server where it speeds up processing.
Do I need a RailGun?
The answer depends on what kind of site you have. If the site is dynamic in the sense that it is a blog that publishes a lot of articles, changes are made on a daily basis, then RailGun can help a lot.
If the site is even wordpress but of the presentation type of some company where there are a few changes per month or per year, then RailGun is definitely not needed.
Ok, how much does it actually speed up the site?
Well, it is quite difficult to say concretely, as with CloudFlare, it also depends on the site itself. On average, it raises ie speeds up the site for 300%. Reduces the first byte (TTFB) by as much as 99%. Therefore, your site reads very very fast.
So accelerating that part of the third that is not normally cached with CloudFlare can now be accelerated with RailGun. Page load times drop by as much as 80% with RailGun.
The worst result that CloudFlare presented to have achieved is 56% site acceleration with RailGun, if we take into account that it is pumped for every average site we can say that it is certainly 30% accelerated.
How to test?
RailGun is available directly on the cloudflare site at a price of $200 per month (22,000 dinars) per domain. With us, you get it for free because we are an official CloudFlare partner.
Simply activate RailGun (you must first have cloudflare active for that site) in cPanel then CloudFlare, then your domain and then just one click on RailGun to turn green as in the image below:
and with that you have activated it.
How do you check if it really works?
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/claire/fgbpcgddpmjmamlibbaobboigaijnmkl
using the link above you can install the extension in your chrome browser and thus check if railgun is active and see not only on your site but on every site you visit if it uses cloudflare and if it has RailGun.
When the site you visited has CloudFlare, then the icon will turn orange, and when you click on it, you will get something like:
If the RailGun is red, it means it's working.
It is also important to have http2 active on your hosting in addition to cloudflare and railgun. This is set by your hosting provider, not you.
Every one of our packages has HTTP2 as well as CloudFlare and RailGun.
