- Hey guys, my name is Christian Taylor.
Welcome back to Craylor Made,
where I like to talk about all things branding,
marketing, and entrepreneurship.
So I talk a lot about websites on this channel,
and regardless of which website platform you use,
your website can never be too fast or too secure.
Cloudflare has become an industry standard tool
that's completely free to use,
and it helps you with both of these goals.
But before I show you how to enable Cloudflare,
let me take some time to explain what Cloudflare is
and how it works.
At its core, Cloudflare is a content delivery network
and load balancing platform.
That is the first thing your visitors will pass through when
when they visit your website.
Now, traditionally with a website,
a user types in your domain name,
gets connected to your hosting account,
and the server sends the website files back to the user.
When using Cloudflare,
you'll actually point your domain name servers to Cloudflare
instead of your web post.
And you'll use Cloudflare's DNS system to route the traffic
to your web server.
Now this puts your web hosting account behind a wall.
A user's browser will first pass through the Cloudflare
network before Cloudflare sends a request to your web host,
and then your website files get sent back to the user
through Cloudflare.
This has two insanely powerful advantages,
security and speed.
Now I'm sure security is pretty easy to understand
in this example.
Since the user's traffic passes through Cloudflare first,
Cloudflare acts as a first line of defense
and scans the traffic to make sure it's legitimate
before forwarding the request to your web host.
Simply put, so many websites use Cloudflare,
that Cloudflare is constantly monitoring
malicious IP addresses
and is able to immediately take action
across their entire network
when a hacker or bot is attempting to visit any website
on their platform.
Think of it kind of like a bouncer at a club.
The bouncer is Cloudflare
and the bouncer is part of the Cloudflare network.
You can have a bunch of clubs with a bunch of bouncers
that are all part of Cloudflare's network.
And if one bad guy tries to get into a club
who shouldn't be in the club,
that bouncer immediately tells all the other bouncers
in the Cloudflare network, hey,
be on the lookout for this guy.
He's shady.
If you see him, don't let him into the club.
That is what Cloudflare is doing with malicious traffic,
trying to get into any website on the Cloudflare network.
Now research shows that Cloudflare is used by over 12%
of websites on the internet.
So Cloudflare has an insane amount of internet traffic
to analyze and use as a reference to protect your website.
Cloudflare also brings speed benefits to your website.
Cloudflare's content delivery network is able to cash parts
of your website files on their many servers
around the world.
And this means that your website is able to load faster
regardless of where someone is geographically located.
Even if they're in France
and your web server is in California.
Cloudflare will be able to deliver small bits and pieces
of the website from their server in France to help speed up
the process and make your website smoother and faster
for everybody worldwide.
The best part is, all of Cloudflare's core features
are 100% free to use.
I've used Cloudflare on all of my websites for years now,
and I've never paid a penny.
Before we get into how to set up Cloudflare,
I wanna make it clear that this tutorial
is specifically for WordPress websites
or any website that uses a dedicated web hosting account.
If you're using a hosted website platform like Wix,
Squarespace or the GoDaddy site builder,
these platforms tend to be picky about Cloudflare
and require you to take extra steps to set it up.
And it may not be necessary because a lot of site builders
have their own internal CDN and security system
that does exactly what Cloudflare does.
Cloudflare is awesome though.
So if you'd like to use it on your Wix or Squarespace
website, I encourage you to do some research
and see if it's possible.
But today I'll be demonstrating how to set up Cloudflare
with any cPanel web hosting account.
If you're using a web host that doesn't use cPanel,
the process is exactly the same.
I'll just let you know the one step that you have to do
differently when we get to it.
All right, so I've got my WordPress website up right here.
You can see it's on my domain name, now, right now,
the name servers are just pointed to my web posts.
So if I go over to Dynadot here,
this is where this domain is registered.
And I click on it.
You're gonna see that my name servers are pointing
to Namecheap or whatever web host you have.
You may have Flywheel, Kinsta, Hostinger, Cloudways.
It doesn't matter.
You would have the web hosts name servers
set up on your domain name,
using the traditional method of pointing your domain
to your website.
So Cloudflare is gonna change this.
So to get started,
we're just gonna go over to Cloudflare, cloudflare.com.
And we're gonna sign up here.
We're gonna create an account.
Eh, I'm not gonna add it to my password manager.
All right, so right here, boom.
This is where we get started with adding our domain name.
I'm just going to type my domain.
And click add site.
Now, this is where Cloudflare is gonna try to upsell you
because they do have paid plans.
But trust me,
please take my word for it.
You don't need a paid plan.
You really do not.
I have never once paid for a plan with Cloudflare, ever.
You just don't need it.
The free plan gives you everything you need.
It gives you that speed and security benefit
that I talked about earlier.
So we're just gonna click on free and click confirm plan.
And guys, this is forever free as well.
This is not a free trial.
There is no catch to this.
This is truly free all the time.
No catches.
It's pretty awesome.
So this is the important part.
Cloudflare is going to scan your domain name
and they're gonna look at where it needs to be pointing.
And this is important because you need to confirm
with the web host,
that all of this is pointing where it needs to go.
Now, I know this looks intimidating to you,
especially if you've never edited DNS records before.
You're probably like, whoa, what the heck is this?
But just chill out, trust me.
It's nothing to stress over, here is the important part.
This is what really matters.
All of this can stay.
You don't need to do anything,
but what you need to do is confirm that the IP address
is correct on the root domain.
Which is this, craylor.club.
You're gonna see a record with your domain name
somewhere in here, in all of these records.
And you're gonna see what it points to.
Now how do we confirm
that this is pointing to the right place?
Well, with any cPanel web host, it's really easy.
So I've got this hosted at Namecheap,
and I can go over to cPanel here,
and this is the panel that Namecheap gives you.
cPanel is very common.
You're gonna see it with a lot of web hosts,
like GoDaddy, A2 Hosting, lot of guys use cPanel.
Even Hostinger uses cPanel.
And you're gonna see this section right here
towards the top that says either shared IP address,
dedicated IP address, or IP address.
But what you're looking for is you're looking for this
to match that record in Cloudflare.
So we see 199.188.201.205.
Now, if we go back to Cloudflare, we see that it's the same.
We see 199.188.201.205.
Now this is the critical part, these match.
So we're good to go.
If your records do not match,
you've got a problem.
Setting up Cloudflare and continuing
is going to basically break your website.
And then if it's a really important website
like for your business or something,
you're gonna have some panic
because your website's gonna go down.
So as long as this IP address right here
matches this IP address in cPanel, you're good to go.
And this is a step I said would be different
if you don't have a cPanel web host.
As long as you have web hosting,
you can set up Cloudflare like this.
But if you don't have cPanel,
your steps will differ because you won't have this section
right here at the top.
So you may have to reach out to your web host.
You may have to chat in, call in, and just say, hey,
I'm setting up Cloudflare, what's my IP address?
And they'll be able to help you out with that.
All right, so everything else is good to go.
Cloudflare is really good about scanning everything
and putting the important records in here.
So now that we've confirmed,
I'm just gonna click on continue.
And this is the next step.
This is where we make it official.
And we point our domain to Cloudflare.
And then Cloudflare is gonna point people to the web server,
to that IP address that we just confirmed.
So I'm gonna take the name servers here,
and I'm doing this in Dynadot,
but it's really easy to change name servers
on any domain registrar.
Namecheap, Porkbun, Google Domains,
whoever you're using, it's really easy.
So I'm just gonna click to copy this name server,
and I'm gonna go over to my Dynadot panel.
And I'm gonna click here by this name server,
and we're gonna enter new or existing name servers.
So on number one,
I'm just gonna paste this in, adrian.ns.cloudflare.com.
I'm gonna go back to Cloudflare.
I'm gonna copy the second one, which is Jasper.
I'm gonna go paste that in,
and click save name server.
Name servers is modified.
That's all done.
I'm gonna go back to Cloudflare
and say done, check name servers.
Now this is the last step here.
They're gonna want to know some information about SSL
and how this is all going to work,
how they're gonna treat SSL certificates.
If your site is using SSL,
just go ahead and leave this on full.
If you're not sure, really honestly,
I would leave it on full.
And if you have any issues,
you can go back and change this at any time.
The changes to it are pretty instant.
So I'm just gonna say,
leave everything the same on this page as is and click done.
And that's it, you're done setting up Cloudflare.
Now you're gonna see this saying, hey,
Cloudflare is not active yet.
Cloudflare will activate itself
as soon as the name servers point there.
Now if you're impatient,
you can click this recheck now button
and just periodically refresh the page
and see if it's actually set up or not.
But Cloudflare is really good
about checking this automatically.
And they will actually send you an email
as soon as Cloudflare is activated.
So when you get that email saying your domain
has been added to Cloudflare, everything's set up.
It is really important that you just confirm your website
is working still.
Go in it on multiple devices,
on your computer, on your phone.
Make sure it's still working.
Make sure that nothing broke.
In fact, even before it says it's working,
you can start checking.
I can go to craylor.club
and just see that it's still functioning.
And would you see, it's still functioning.
Because we just want to check over the coming hours,
over the coming days.
Make sure that everything is functioning as normal,
because if it's not and you're unable to figure it out,
you would change back to your old name server.
So make sure you write this down, screenshot it,
do what you need to do, because there's no need to panic.
If all else fails,
and if everything just breaks
and your site just isn't loading
and you did something wrong, you don't need to panic.
Simply change it back to these old name servers,
until you can step back,
take a look, and figure out what might've gone wrong,
But that's it.
Cloudflare's been set up for your WordPress website
or whatever website you have hosted on your web host.
You're good to go.
And you'll now enjoy the added security and speed benefits
that Cloudflare gives you for free.
So I hope this video helped you learn about the advantages
of Cloudflare and how to set it up with your website.
It's truly 100% free to use.
So there's no reason not to use it.
With the increased traffic globally,
due to everyone being at home,
there's never been a better time to speed up your website
and protect it from attacks free of charge.
So what do you think of Cloudflare?
Did you use it before this video?
Are you gonna set it up after watching this video?
Or do you personally think it's fluff and it's unnecessary?
I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments down below.
And if you liked this video,
do be sure to hit that subscribe button and click the bell.
So you don't miss when I release new videos.
With that said, I will catch you guys next time.