Speed Up Your Web Site by 40%! A Thorough Look at Cloudflare's Fast Delivery and Privacy Features!
- Custom domain: about 12 USD per year
- 40% faster with Cloudflare
- No personal data collection
Introduction
Hello, I'm Easygoing.
This time, I'd like to introduce how to create fast-loading web pages that respect privacy.
It's Been About 1.5 Years Since Launching the English Site!
In October 2024, I launched AI Image Journey, an English-translated version of the content from Japanese note articles.
AI Image Journey (This Site)
Original Japanese note Articles
Features of AI Image Journey
- High-speed delivery via Cloudflare
- Beautiful illustrations and diagrams
- No collection of personal privacy data
About 1.5 years have passed since the site launch, and now it has over 100 articles with rich content. So this time, I'd like to take a look at the site's features and current traffic numbers.
The Platform Is Google Blogger
AI Image Journey is built using the Google Blogger platform.
Blogger is a blogging platform provided by Google, and anyone with a Google account can use it completely free.
Comparison of Blog Platforms
| Platform | Launch Year | Cost | Customization | Image Storage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blogger | 1999 | Free | 🟢 | Unlimited |
| WordPress | 2003 | Server rental fees | ✅ | Depends on plan |
| GitHub Pages | 2008 | Free | ✅ | Up to 1 GB |
| note | 2011 | Free | ❌ | Unlimited (lossy compression) |
Blogger allows editing of template HTML, so it offers high customizability and unlimited image upload capacity.
On the other hand, Blogger is a quite old platform, so by today's standards many parts feel outdated, and I wouldn't recommend it to everyone right now.
If you're starting a new website today, using GitHub Pages and building it with the help of AI will probably let you create a more polished site.
A Custom Domain Is Easy to Remember!
Blogger allows free domains (your address on the internet), but for AI Image Journey, the only expense I chose to take on was purchasing a custom domain for a fee.
- Free domain: ai-image-journey.blogspot.com
- Custom domain: ai-image-journey.com
A custom domain is easy to remember at first glance, and it also enables use of the CDN I'll introduce next, which can dramatically speed up delivery.
Domain Management Costs
| Registrar | Registration Fee (First Year) | Renewal Fee (Per Year) |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | 11–12 USD, (Approx. ¥1,800) | Approx. ¥1,800 |
| お名前.com | ¥0 (¥750 for 2nd and subsequent domains) | ¥1,615 |
| Xserver Domain | ¥1 (¥770 for 2nd and subsequent domains) | ¥1,722 |
| Sakura Domain | ¥3,220 | ¥3,220 |
Cloudflare Domain Renewal Invoice
Domain management fees vary by company, but for AI Image Journey I purchase and manage a ".com" domain through Cloudflare, with actual annual costs of 11–12 USD (about ¥1,800).
Other Japanese registrars offer similar pricing plans, but many charge extra "service maintenance adjustment fees" and often push you toward bundling with rental servers. So if you just want simple domain-only management, Cloudflare is very convenient.
High-Speed Delivery with Cloudflare!
AI Image Journey delivers pages using Cloudflare's CDN (Content Delivery Network).
Even with the free plan, Cloudflare provides sufficient CDN functionality, delivering pages via their server network spanning 330 locations worldwide.
Once content is delivered, Cloudflare servers keep it in cache, so subsequent requests from nearby users can be served very quickly.
The speed benefit of a CDN is greatest when users are far from the origin server, so it is especially powerful for sites like English pages that receive a lot of traffic from overseas.
Page Fetch Time Improved by 40%!
Now let's actually measure how much faster page loading becomes with Cloudflare on the AI Image Journey homepage.
Chrome Developer Tools (F12)
Cloudflare Disabled
| Trial | Connection | Download Waiting (TTFB) | Download Time | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No.1 | 152 ms | 854 ms | 299 ms | 1,304 ms |
| No.2 | 87 ms | 457 ms | 171 ms | 715 ms |
| No.3 | 94 ms | 417 ms | 174 ms | 686 ms |
| No.4 | 238 ms | 945 ms | 1,030 ms | 2,213 ms |
| No.5 | 152 ms | 460 ms | 203 ms | 815 ms |
| Median | 152 ms | 460 ms | 203 ms | 815 ms |
Cloudflare Enabled
| Trial | Connection | Download Waiting (TTFB) | Download Time | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No.1 | 97 ms | 1,110 ms | 196 ms | 1,403 ms |
| No.2 | 98 ms | 154 ms | 188 ms | 440 ms |
| No.3 | 80 ms | 159 ms | 162 ms | 400 ms |
| No.4 | 109 ms | 162 ms | 198 ms | 468 ms |
| No.5 | 93 ms | 245 ms | 201 ms | 539 ms |
| Median | 97 ms | 162 ms | 196 ms | 468 ms |
Median Comparison
Cloudflare Benefits
- HTML fetch time reduced by 40%
- Especially, connection and download waiting times halved
- Extreme outliers disappear
Without Cloudflare, page fetch took about 0.8 seconds, but with it enabled, that drops to about 0.45 seconds.
Looking at the breakdown, the initial connection and download wait time are halved — showing that Cloudflare enables fast and stable communication.
Since simply adding Cloudflare to a custom domain gives you a 40% speed boost, it's definitely worth trying out casually.
Privacy and Cookies
In the second half, let's think about website privacy and cookies.
As of March 2026, the strictest regulation on personal data collection online is Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
GDPR ePrivacy Directive (2009/136/EC amendment)
Article 5(3)
Member States shall ensure that the storing of information, or the gaining of access to information already stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned has given his or her consent, having been provided with clear and comprehensive information, in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC, inter alia, about the purposes of the processing. This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user to provide the service.
Although GDPR is European law, it has extraterritorial application, meaning that even if your server is in Japan, if the site is accessible from Europe, the regulation applies.
Tracking Users with Cookies
Websites track users by storing small text data called cookies in the user's browser.
- Essential cookies: Strictly necessary for site functionality
- Other cookies: Not strictly necessary
For cookies that are essential to site functionality (e.g., login info or shopping cart contents on e-commerce sites), operators can collect and use the data without user consent.
However, when using non-essential personal data (e.g., Google AdSense targeted ads or Google Analytics tracking), you are required to explain it to users in advance and obtain their consent.
Notifications without a "Reject" button are considered invalid under GDPR.
These days many sites show a cookie popup (notification asking for cookie permission) when you visit, but if you don't want your personal information used for non-essential purposes, you do not have to agree.
Cloudflare Web Analytics Collects No Personal Data
AI Image Journey uses only essential cookies and does not use any other cookies that collect personal information.
AI Image Journey Privacy Policy
While we do perform access analytics, we don't use the widely adopted Google Analytics — instead we use Cloudflare Web Analytics.
Features of Cloudflare Web Analytics
- Does not use cookies or localStorage
- Anonymizes IP addresses during processing
- Collects data server-side without leaving anything in the browser
Cloudflare's GDPR Compliance Page
According to Cloudflare's official stance, Cloudflare Web Analytics does not access user device storage and does not collect personally identifiable information, so no cookie consent banner is required when using it.
Personally, I don't particularly like sites that implement cookie banners, so I'm very satisfied that using Cloudflare Web Analytics allowed me to create a site that respects visitor privacy.
Half of the Traffic Comes from the United States
Finally, let's check AI Image Journey's actual traffic numbers using Cloudflare Web Analytics.
Daily Site Visitors
- Daily unique visitors: 673 people
- Total page requests: 2,730
Cloudflare Web Analytics counts accesses from different devices by the same user as separate visitors, and also includes crawlers like Googlebot, so the actual number of human visitors is lower than this figure.
Top Countries/Regions Over the Past 30 Days
Looking at the past 30 days, about half of the traffic comes from the United States, followed by Singapore and Japan.
Using Cloudflare Web Analytics confirmed that AI Image Journey, as an English site, receives more traffic from overseas than from Japan.
Summary: The Meaning of Having Your Own Site
- Custom domain: about 12 USD per year
- 40% faster with Cloudflare
- No personal data collection
It's been roughly 1.5 years since I started writing on note, and from my experience, note is undoubtedly the easiest and most sustainable platform for starting and continuing a blog in Japan.
Note is actively adding new features, and they recently announced testing of AI automatic translation for multilingual support, which will likely bring more search traffic from abroad and make it an even stronger platform.
As note advances toward multilingual support, reflecting again on the value of having my own English site, I realized that experimenting with things like Cloudflare and layering customizations has become a way to study the evolving common practices of the web.
Nowadays, with the spread of chat AIs like Gemini and ChatGPT, the barrier to creating websites has dropped dramatically. So why not take on the challenge of building your own website alongside note?
Thank you for reading all the way to the end!