How To Integrate Your Website With Cloudflare
The second-most support request for the month of December had to do with Cloudflare.
Since we offer a free integration with our Web Hosting and Reseller Hosting accounts, I wanted to film an updated tutorial to help those just getting started.
Before we begin, it's important to understand the difference between a Partial vs. Full Integration with Cloudflare.
In short, a Partial integration uses your current name servers at AppsGators, while a full one requires you change your name servers to Cloudflare's.
If you decide to go with the full integration, unfortunately our team won't be able to support it, since we cannot access your Cloudflare account directly.
You can however, still use the free Railgun.
Setup Cloudflare Inside cPanel
Quicksteps:
- Login to cPanel
- Navigate to Cloudflare
- Create An Account
- Click Provision Account With CNAME Setup
- Enable Railgun
Allow 24 Hours For SSL To Propogate
Remember, if you're using SSL on your website, it will have to be regenerated by Cloudflare. This process takes up to 24 hours and may create errors on your secure pages.
Personally, I recommend enabling this during the weekend/off peak hours to avoid any interruption in traffic.
Since we have Let's Encrypt enabled, you can change your Cloudflare settings to FULL but it will still require that time to propagate.
It's also important that you enable "Development mode" when making changes to your website so you can see them update in real time.
Don't Overthink Cloudflare
For whatever reason, Cloudflare doesn't workout for some customers.
If it doesn't work for you, don't overcomplicate it.
Our network infrastructure has been designed to be blazing fast for your website without it. However, if you want a little extra boost Cloudflare is available to do so.
But if it starts to create more trouble than it's worth, don't get too stressed out about it.
I personally been using Cloudflare for many years now with a lot of success, but it's still not the end-all-be-all.
