Here’s a full guide of how to add a website to Cloudflare, Blog or WordPress website.
If you don’t know What is Cloudflare or how does it work, you need to check my full informational topic about Cloudflare “What is Cloudflare & how does it work“.
Alright, first you need to go to Cloudflare website and register an account, don’t worry it’s totally free.
Of course there’s a premium version of it, but most of the services there are free, at least the ones you actually need for your website.
How to add a website to Cloudflare
Step one : Add your domain name
Type your domain name to add website to Cloudflare.
Step two : Choose a Plan
Like I said before, there’s a free plan and paid plans. However, paid plans give you more options and security, you might need it if you get huge monthly traffic.
Click continue.
Step Three : Reviewing DNS
In this process, Cloudflare is scanning your website to check the DNS and Records.
Check this guide for more speed : What is AMP? How to add AMP to WordPress?
Cloudflare must search and scan every single DNS record in process to add a website to Cloudflare.
In this stage, you can add record or change existed records. I recommend leaving it except if you know what are you doing.
Now, scroll down and click “Continue” at the bottom of the page.
Step Four : Change your domain DNS
To add a website to Cloudflare, you have to change your server DNS to Cloudflare’s DNS, it’s a bit tricky if you’re a beginner.
You need to go to your domain provider and change your web hosting DNS to Cloudflare DNS.
There are too many domain providers and each one of them got a different control panel, but I’ll explain how to do it via GoDaddy. Please follow the steps to successfully add a website to Cloudflare.
If you know how to do it! Jump to Step five
Check this guide : 8 Best and affordable Web Hosting For WordPress
How to change GoDaddy DNS?
- Go to “GoDaddy” website and log in using your existing account
- At the top right of your screen, click on your account name to open a drop-down menu, then click on “My Products”
- Choose the domain you added to Cloudflare, then click “DNS”
- Go to Nameservers “Using custom nameservers” then click “Change”
- Choose “I’ll use my own nameservers” then add Cloudflare DNS
Then click “Save”. Sometimes GoDaddy requires email verification or short period of time to apply changes. In this case you need to wait a bit until you continue the step to add a website to Cloudflare.
Step Five : The final step to add site to Cloudflare.
You’re good to go, let’s finish a few simple steps.
Once you’re done of replacing DNS, click on “Done, Check nameservers”
Click “Configuration recommendations”.
So Cloudflare provides security and performance, not just this! It also provides an option to minify your file like (CSS, JavaScript, HTML) to have a faster website.
The other option is changing your website certificate from HTTP to HTTPS to make it secure for the visitors.
Both options help you to have a better protection and optimization for your website.
You can click “Skip recommendations” if you don’t want to apply it.
Click “Apply recommendation” for both options.
Once you’re done, click on “go to the overview page”.
You’re good to go, Sometimes it takes 24 hours to apply the changes. Don’t worry, your website won’t be offline or go down.
You will get an Email says “Your website successfully added to Cloudflare CDN”.
After you add a website to Cloudflare, you can go to dashboard and explore a lot of free options that can help make your website more secure and faster. Also, you can add an Email record to use an Email application using Cloudflare services.
That’s the end of this tutorial (how to add a website to Cloudflare). If you’re looking additional help about how to add website to Cloudflare, Please contact me!
P.S. Happy posting ⌨
