So, you’ve built your new website—congratulations! You’ve put in the hard work on the design and content, and now it’s time to go live. But before you announce it to the world, there’s one crucial step you shouldn’t skip: setting up Cloudflare.
If you’re new to this, don’t worry. You might be asking, “What is Cloudflare, and why do I need it?”
In simple terms, Cloudflare is like a super-smart security guard and delivery driver for your website. It sits between your visitors and your web host, doing two critical jobs:
- It Speeds Things Up: It stores a copy of your site on servers around the world (a Content Delivery Network, or CDN), so pages load faster for everyone, no matter where they are.
- It Protects Your Site: It blocks bad bots, hackers, and spammy traffic before they can reach your site, preventing crashes and attacks.
The best part? Cloudflare’s core plan is completely free and is more than enough for most new websites.
Ready to make your site faster and safer? Let’s get it done in five straightforward steps.
Before You Begin: What You’ll Need
- Your website already hosted with a web hosting provider (like Hostinger, GoDaddy,Truehost etc.).
- Access to your domain registrar (where you bought your domain name, e.g., example.com).
- About 15 minutes of your time.
Step 1: Sign Up and Add Your Website to Cloudflare
First, you need to create a Cloudflare account and tell it which website you want to protect.
- Go to the Cloudflare website and click “Sign Up.”
- Enter your email address and create a password.
- On the next screen, you’ll be asked to “Add a Website.” Type in your domain name (e.g.,
yourwebsite.com) and click “Add Site.” - Cloudflare will automatically scan your existing DNS records. This might take a minute.
Step 2: Choose Your Plan (Spoiler: Pick the Free One!)
After the scan, you’ll be presented with a list of plans. For a new website, the Free plan is perfect. It gives you all the essential speed and security benefits.
- Select the “Free” plan and click “Continue.”
Step 3: Review Your DNS Records (The Most Important Step)
This is the technical heart of the setup. DNS records are like the internet’s phone book—they tell browsers where to find your website. Cloudflare needs to manage these records for you.
- You’ll see a list of your DNS records that Cloudflare imported. The most important ones are usually:
- An
ARecord that points your root domain (yourwebsite.com) to an IP address. - A
CNAMERecord (often calledwww) that points thewwwversion of your site (www.yourwebsite.com) to your root domain.
- An
- Crucial Check: Cloudflare will show a status icon next to each record. For the records you want to proxy through Cloudflare (which you do!), the icon should be an orange cloud. If you see a grey cloud, click on it to turn it orange.
- Orange Cloud = Traffic goes through Cloudflare (fast and secure!).
- Grey Cloud = Traffic bypasses Cloudflare (direct to your host).
For most records, especially your main A and CNAME records, you want the orange cloud.
Step 4: Change Your Nameservers
This is the final step within Cloudflare, and it’s what officially puts it in charge of your domain’s traffic.
- After reviewing your DNS records, click “Continue.”
- Cloudflare will display two custom nameservers for you (they will look something like
kate.ns.cloudflare.comandvirgil.ns.cloudflare.com). Copy these two nameserver addresses. You will need them for the next step.
Step 5: Activate Cloudflare at Your Domain Registrar
Now, you need to tell your domain registrar (where you bought your domain, e.g., GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains) to use Cloudflare’s nameservers.
- Log in to your domain registrar’s website.
- Find the section for managing your domain’s DNS settings or Nameservers. This is often found in “Domain Management.”
- You will see the current nameservers (likely your hosting company’s or the registrar’s default ones). Replace them with the two Cloudflare nameservers you copied in Step 4.
- Save the changes.
Important: This change can take some time to propagate across the internet—anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours. Don’t panic if your site seems down for a short period; it’s just the internet updating its address book. For most people, it happens within the hour.
You’re All Set!
Once the nameserver change fully propagates, your website is officially supercharged by Cloudflare! You can go to your Cloudflare dashboard, and you should see a status confirming your site is “Active.”
What to do now? Explore your Cloudflare dashboard! You can try enabling features like “Auto Minify” (under the Speed tab) to make your files even smaller and faster, or tweak security settings to challenge suspicious visitors.
By taking these five simple steps, you’ve significantly improved your website’s performance and security, giving you and your visitors a much better experience. Now go forth and share your new, faster, and safer website with the world
If you need any help feel free to contact Deployte we will offer consultation for Free.