Enable Cloudflare
Updated 2 months ago
Cloudflare is a service that acts as an intermediary between our site and its visitors. Basically, it clones our site across many different servers around the world, so users access the copy that is physically closest to them (a user in Spain will access our site hosted in Spain, while a user in Mexico will access it from a data center located in their country: see How does Cloudflare work?)
At the same time, the service provides improvements in speed, security, and availability.
Enabling it is a simple process that can be completed in just a few minutes.
Step 1: Create an account on CloudFlare
We need to go to https://dash.cloudflare.com/sign-up
We need to sign up with an email account (or social media account) and a password.
If we use an email address, we will need to confirm it through the email that Cloudflare sends us.
Step 2: Add our domain to CloudFlare
Once inside the Cloudflare dashboard, we will click the “Add” button.
We will enter our domain in the provided field (example.com) and then click the “Continue” button.
We will choose the free (Free) plan if we do not need advanced features (the vast majority of users do not need the paid plan). In any case, if our site eventually requires it, we can switch to the PRO plan without any issues.
After this step, Cloudflare will automatically scan the existing DNS records. To be safe, we can verify that the information is correct by comparing it with the current records from our hosting provider (although if we entered our site URL correctly, the retrieved data should certainly be accurate).
We need to find the final blue "Continue with activation" button and click it.
Step 3: Update the DNS at our registrar
Cloudflare will provide us with two new nameservers or DNS servers (e.g., ns1.cloudflare.com and ns2.cloudflare.com). We will need to reconfigure our domain through our provider (that is, the company that sold us the domain, such as Nic.Ar, GoDaddy, Duplika, Hostway, Namecheap, etc.).
To do this, we will need to access its control panel and look for the DNS or nameservers administration section.
There, we will replace the current DNS servers with those provided by Cloudflare and save the changes.
Please note that the so-called “DNS propagation” (that is, the update of DNS servers from one server to another—in this case, to Cloudflare) can take up to 24 hours.