Over the next couple of weeks we’re making some behind-the-scenes changes to [Politicalbetting’s plumbing. The short version: we’re moving the site behind Cloudflare, the world’s most widely used network for keeping websites fast, reliable, and resilient when people make outrageous claims about the benefits of pineapple on pizza.

The process has three steps: first, we’ll move our DNS to Cloudflare. Then we’ll transfer the domain registration. Finally, we’ll switch on proxying, which is the bit that really boosts speed and resilience. Each step should go smoothly.

The key word, though, is ‘should’. There may be the odd patch of disruption along the way. Especially as this is not my day job, and I don’t always know exactly what I’m doing.

Why bother? Because PB is at its busiest exactly when the rest of the internet seems to be melting. Whether it’s a general election, a leadership coup, or TSE heading off on a holiday, traffic surges can bring servers to their knees. (And if Radiohead ever drops a surprise album on polling day, we’ll really need Cloudflare.)

Once the move is complete, PB should be faster, more resilient, and less likely to wobble under the strain.

And do remember, even the main PB site goes down, you can (hopefully) still get to https://vf.politicalbetting.com. (I say hopefully, because we’ll be updating the DNS records for that too.)

Robert