Considering setting up Cloudflare.com for your WORDPRESS or WOOCOMMERCE site? Here is some instructions and helpful FAQs.
STEP 1 – CREATE AN ACCOUNT:
Let’s get started!
- Go to cloudflare.com and mouse over PRICING > then click on “COMPARE ALL PLANS”. This will give you a comparison between all of the plans they have by clicking on the “tabs” for each plan name.
- With the plan you want selected, click on the “ADD A WEBSITE” or “GET STARTED” button.
- Complete the registration form and submit.
- On the next page the “Accelerate and protect your site with Cloudflare” option will be given. For this enter your website address without the www or any subdomain. In example if your website is http://www.yoursite.com, you would just enter yoursite.com, then click “ADD SITE” button.
- Cloudflare will scan your website “DNS” records, and respond asking you if those are correct. Accept them (can always be adjusted later).
For now you can just leave this site open, as you will need to go into your account again shortly to finish the process.
STEP 1b – DEVELOPER ACCESS:
If our team is installing and configuring cloudflare.com for you, please follow these instructions for adding our team to your cloudflare.com account. This will allow us to easily access your account for any debugging, issues, accidental blocks, and more.
- Login to cloudflare.com, then select your account / domain.
- Go to MANAGE ACCOUNT > MEMBERS.
- Click INVITE.
- Fill out the form using your assigned project manager email address, and ensure for “role” to select “administrator”.
- Click CONTINUE to review the invite details, then click INVITE to complete this.
STEP 2 – ADD WORDPRESS PLUGIN:
The next step is to add your preferred WordPress plugin to integrate Cloudflare. If you have placed a work order with us for integrating Cloudflare, our team will take care of this and report back when its clear for you to move onto step 3.
If you are instead doing this yourself, we recommend one of two:
- Official Cloudflare plugin: This plugin is ideal for anyone who doesn’t already have a cache plugin installed. You can grab it here.
- Cache plugins: There are various cache plugins that have Cloudflare already integrated with it that you can easily turn on. We recommend WP ROCKET for the best website cache and Cloudflare integration. It is a paid plugin, but our team has done various testing across all cache plugins and found this one is the best with or without Cloudflare.
After selecting which plugin you will use, install and activate it (if you are unsure how, get with your website developer).
OFFICIAL CLOUDFLARE PLUGIN:
This plugin is very easy to install and configure and includes step by step instructions.
WP ROCKET PLUGIN:
This plugin has cloudflare option integrated right into it. Here is how you integrate Cloudflare in your admin tools:
- Go to WP ROCKET > then select SETTINGS.
- On the left hand menu within WP ROCKET click on “ADD-ONS”, then scroll down and locate CLOUDFLARE and click to enable it, then click “MODIFY OPTIONS” button.
- You will need to go back into your CLOUDFLARE website to gather some additional information including: Global API Key, Account email address, Zone ID. You can read more in this tutorial here.
- Back on your website in WP ROCKET OPTIONS screen (this is where you left off) after you obtain all 3 items, copy and paste into their corresponding fields.
- Click SAVE button.
STEP 3 – DOMAIN CHANGES:
For this step you will need to login to your domain registrar account that has your website domain. Instructions below may vary based upon who your domain was bought through. If you are unsure how to complete these steps, then please call your domain registrar support line.
IMPORTANT: Ensure once you get to this step, you immediately complete all remaining steps to avoid potential downtime issues. This should take you about 15 minutes.
- Go back into your CLOUDFLARE account, click on your website domain, then copy the values for Nameserver 1 and Nameserver 2, paste into a document or notepad, then go to your domain registrar website.
- Login to your domain registrar account, then go into your domain manager tools.
- Click on your website domain, or look for an option that says “Manage / Change / Modify Nameservers”.
- You should see two nameservers listed there. You want to replace those existing ones with the new ones you copied and save.
STEP 4 – CLOUDFLARE FINAL CHECK:
This is the final step for CLOUDFLARE, that will ensure you have optimal settings done for your WordPress website.
- Go back into your CLOUDFLARE account and click on your domain.
- If you still see the “Complete your nameserver setup” steps, scroll to the bottom and click the “Re-check now” button. Once this is working properly then continue (note: in some cases this may take a few hours or even as long as a day. If that is the case, then you can come back to this final step tomorrow).
- Options: Cloudflare will give you a set of options for how you want it configured. We recommend the following options be enabled:
- Set Cloudflare’s caching level to Standard
- Activate Cloudflare’s minification
- Deactivate Rocket Loader (name unrelated to WP Rocket)
- Set Cloudflare’s browser cache to 1 year
- Save.
STEP 5 – WHITELIST CLOUDFLARE IP ADDRESSES:
As an optional step for higher traffic websites, you can ask your hosting provider to white list cloudflare.com IP addresses. Click [HERE] to see the current list on their website and ask your hosting provider to please add these to their whitelist.
That’s it!
Frequently Asked Questions
WHAT IS CLOUDFLARE?
Cloudflare is a CDN (Content Delivery Network) service that you can hook up to your website. It acts an an in-between “gateway” for all website traffic. Some of the main features of a CDN service include*:
- DDOS attack mitigation: Helps to stop and block the majority of website DDOS attacks before they hit your website.
- Content Delivery Network: The service will grab a copy of all of your public files from your website and save them to their global network. Then when anyone visits your site, the CDN will used its saved, or “cached” files from the closest server to them. The result is a faster load of your website.
- Easily enable / temporarily disable the services at any time.
*note: features vary based upon the plan you choose.
WHO SHOULD USE CLOUDFLARE?
A CDN like Cloudflare is perfect for website owners who want to either improve loading times, want to stop website attacks that are bringing your site down, or both.
Plans start at $0 per month (free). Most people will only need the “Free Plan” or the “Pro Plan” for $20 per month. Here is the main differences between them to help you choose:
- FREE PLAN: Ideal for people who want to stop most website attacks and have a basic CDN for faster site load.
- PRO PLAN: Ideal for people whose website either has a much higher recent attack rate, or wants even more automated tools to help loading time.
WHY WON’T MY NEW CONTENT SHOW?
Since you now are using a CDN and / or cache plugin like WP ROCKET, that means your website pages and content is cached. Normally it takes a few minutes to see your changes, but if you still cannot see your updates or new pages, follow these instructions:
IF USING WP ROCKET:
- Ensure you are logged in as an admin, then go to the front of your site on the page you are having an issue with.
- From the admin bar mini menu, mouse over WP ROCKET, and click on each of the following: Clear Cache, Purge this URL, Clear Cloudflare Cache.
- Refresh the page.
Also CLOUDFLARE offers what it calls “development mode”, which allows you to temporarily disable Cloudflare while you do work on your site, so you can see it in real time. Regardless of which plugin you are using, both offer the option within the plugin to temporarily activate “development mode” from within their corresponding Cloudflare options.
WHY DON’T SOME OF MY SITE PAGES WORK?
Occasionally after you just get CLOUDFLARE integrated with your website, there can be a short period for some users where they click into some pages of your website or try to login that they just get a page refresh instead. In this event we recommend giving it about 30 minutes, then clear your browser cache and try again. If you are still having issues, try the following:
IF USING WP ROCKET:
- Ensure you are logged in as an admin, then go to the front of your site on the page you are having an issue with.
- From the admin bar mini menu, mouse over WP ROCKET, and click on each of the following: Clear Cache, Purge this URL, Clear Cloudflare Cache.
- Refresh the page.
If you still continue to have issues, then you can contact CLOUDFLARE to report the issue and tell them the following information:
- Your website platform is wordpress.
- Which cloudflare plugin you are using.
WHY DO I GET A “Error 521: Web server is down” MESSAGE?
A 521 error is specific to websites using Cloudflare. It means that it cannot connect to the host’s server. This can be caused by various reasons, but the most common one in our experience is when a wordpress website has the following conditions:
- Higher traffic.
- Good server security measures, which temporarily block too many “hits” from the same IP address.
The best way to avoid this is by ensuring your hosting provider has cloudflare.com IP addresses whitelisted. See original instructions step 5 above and consult with your hosting provider.
For more details on this occurrence, please read this fantastic article about WordPress Cloudflare 521 errors.
