SSL, HTTPS, and Cloudflare

Temporarily Disable Cloudflare

Updated 2 weeks ago

Cloudflare's Development Mode suspends caching for 3 hours so you can see your site's changes immediately without disabling Cloudflare. You can activate it from the Cloudflare dashboard, under Caching → Configuration, or from WordPress with LiteSpeed Cache or the App for Cloudflare plugin. If you haven't activated Cloudflare for your domain yet, first follow the Activate Cloudflare guide.

Development Mode doesn't disable Cloudflare: rules, the WAF, and SSL/TLS continue to work. If your problem is a block page or a certificate error, Development Mode won't resolve it; in that case, see Identify and disable Cloudflare WAF rules that are blocking your connection.

Enable Development Mode from Cloudflare

  1. Go to dash.cloudflare.com and select your domain.

  2. In the side menu, go to the caching section, Caching, and then select Configuration.

  3. Enable Development Mode.

What Development Mode does

  • It suspends edge caching and Polish, so you can immediately see changes to content such as images, CSS, and JavaScript.

  • It lasts for 3 hours. After that, it is automatically disabled and caching resumes normal operation.

  • It doesn't delete files that were already cached. To remove them immediately, use Purge Cache in addition to Development Mode.

  • It doesn't turn off Cloudflare: rules (Rules), the WAF, and SSL/TLS remain active during the 3 hours.

If you need to bypass caching for more than 3 hours, Cloudflare recommends creating a cache rule (Cache Rule) with a bypass action instead of leaving Development Mode enabled indefinitely.

Pause Cloudflare completely

If you need traffic to go directly through your server without Cloudflare, use the Pause Cloudflare on Site option. This pauses Cloudflare for the entire site and is different from Development Mode.

  1. On the Cloudflare dashboard home page, select your account and your domain.

  2. In Overview, under Advanced Actions, click Pause Cloudflare on Site.

While the site is paused, visitors go directly to your server, and Cloudflare features such as rules, the WAF, and Cloudflare SSL/TLS certificates are disabled. The pause takes five minutes or less to take effect and saves you from having to change your domain's nameservers.

Enable Development Mode from WordPress

With LiteSpeed Cache

If you use LiteSpeed Cache and have already connected it to your Cloudflare account, you can enable Development Mode without leaving WordPress:

  1. In WordPress, go to LiteSpeed Cache → CDN and open the Cloudflare tab.

  2. Enable Cloudflare API and enter your Global API Key or API Token, your Email Address, and your Domain. Save the changes.

  3. In the Cloudflare section that appears afterward, use the Development Mode control to enable it, check its status, or disable it.

As in the dashboard, the mode is automatically disabled after 3 hours.

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With App for Cloudflare

The App for Cloudflare plugin also lets you toggle Development Mode and purge the cache from the WordPress admin area.

The official Cloudflare plugin for WordPress no longer includes the Development Mode option. To enable it, use the Cloudflare dashboard, LiteSpeed Cache, or App for Cloudflare.

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