How to Setup Cloudflare for WordPress (Step-by-Step Tutorial)
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2025 7:12 am
Creativemotions»WordPress Tips & Guides»How to Setup Cloudflare for WordPress (Step-by-Step Tutorial)
Want to setup Cloudflare for WordPress?
Cloudflare is a free content delivery network (CDN) and security service. Once you connect your WordPress site to Cloudflare, you can speed up your site, secure it with SSL and bot protection, and implement other useful CDN features.
In this Cloudflare for WordPress tutorial, you will learn how to:
Setting up your WordPress site with Cloudflare
Setting up the official Cloudflare plugin for WordPress
Using Cloudflare to Enable HTTPS on Your Site
Table of Contents view
How Cloudflare Benefits Your WordPress Site?
If you’re unfamiliar with Cloudflare, here’s a quick list of some of the armenia phone number data of using Cloudflare for WordPress:
CDN – Cloudflare’s Content Delivery Network helps speed up your site by serving your static content from a large network of global servers. Cloudflare is the most popular free CDN service .
SSL : If your site doesn't already have an SSL certificate, Cloudflare can help you use HTTPS on your WordPress site .
DNS – Cloudflare is one of the fastest DNS providers , which can speed up your site’s time to first byte ( TTFB ).
Security Rules – Cloudflare lets you set up custom security rules to protect specific parts of your site, like your WordPress dashboard.
DDoS Protection – Cloudflare can help protect you from Distributed Denial of Service ( DDoS ) attacks. It can also help you filter malicious traffic in general.
Other performance benefits : Cloudflare can help you minify your code, enable Brotli compression, and implement other performance best practices.
Read Also: VPS vs Shared Hosting: Is VPS Hosting Right for Your WordPress Site?
How to Setup Cloudflare on WordPress
Before you begin configuring options in Cloudflare, you need to connect your site to Cloudflare.
Cloudflare is known as a reverse proxy service. You don't need to know what that means, you just need to know that:
For Cloudflare to work properly, it needs to be able to manage your domain's nameservers so it can serve cached content from its CDN and filter out malicious users ( if you enable security features ).
To do this, you will need to change your domain's nameservers to Cloudflare, which is what most of the basic setup process involves.
Here's how to do it…
1. Create your free account on Cloudflare
To get started, go to Cloudflare and sign up .
On the next page, enter the domain name of the WordPress site you want to use with Cloudflare and click Add site :
Add WordPress Website to Cloudflare
Next, you will be asked to choose a plan. You can choose the free plan for now, as it offers all the features that most WordPress sites need:
Cloudflare Plans
2. Check DNS records
After you choose your plan, Cloudflare will scan your site's DNS records .
If you're not sure what's going on here, don't worry. The only thing you need to check is whether you see an orange cloud next to your main domain name ( which you should see by default - no action required ):
Review DNS records
Then, click Continue .
3. Update your nameservers to point to Cloudflare
Cloudflare will now offer you a new set of nameservers to replace your existing nameservers:
Change WordPress Sites Nameservers to Cloudflare
Nameservers are part of what you use to connect your domain name to your web hosting. When you switch to Cloudflare nameservers, Cloudflare can direct traffic to your website use this feature to:
Filter malicious traffic: Will send regular traffic to your website as usual, while filtering out malicious actors before they can reach your site.
Deliver static content from the closest server in its huge global network (the CDN part)
How you change your nameservers depends on where you registered your domain name. Here are tutorials for some of the most common domain name registrars:
Want to setup Cloudflare for WordPress?
Cloudflare is a free content delivery network (CDN) and security service. Once you connect your WordPress site to Cloudflare, you can speed up your site, secure it with SSL and bot protection, and implement other useful CDN features.
In this Cloudflare for WordPress tutorial, you will learn how to:
Setting up your WordPress site with Cloudflare
Setting up the official Cloudflare plugin for WordPress
Using Cloudflare to Enable HTTPS on Your Site
Table of Contents view
How Cloudflare Benefits Your WordPress Site?
If you’re unfamiliar with Cloudflare, here’s a quick list of some of the armenia phone number data of using Cloudflare for WordPress:
CDN – Cloudflare’s Content Delivery Network helps speed up your site by serving your static content from a large network of global servers. Cloudflare is the most popular free CDN service .
SSL : If your site doesn't already have an SSL certificate, Cloudflare can help you use HTTPS on your WordPress site .
DNS – Cloudflare is one of the fastest DNS providers , which can speed up your site’s time to first byte ( TTFB ).
Security Rules – Cloudflare lets you set up custom security rules to protect specific parts of your site, like your WordPress dashboard.
DDoS Protection – Cloudflare can help protect you from Distributed Denial of Service ( DDoS ) attacks. It can also help you filter malicious traffic in general.
Other performance benefits : Cloudflare can help you minify your code, enable Brotli compression, and implement other performance best practices.
Read Also: VPS vs Shared Hosting: Is VPS Hosting Right for Your WordPress Site?
How to Setup Cloudflare on WordPress
Before you begin configuring options in Cloudflare, you need to connect your site to Cloudflare.
Cloudflare is known as a reverse proxy service. You don't need to know what that means, you just need to know that:
For Cloudflare to work properly, it needs to be able to manage your domain's nameservers so it can serve cached content from its CDN and filter out malicious users ( if you enable security features ).
To do this, you will need to change your domain's nameservers to Cloudflare, which is what most of the basic setup process involves.
Here's how to do it…
1. Create your free account on Cloudflare
To get started, go to Cloudflare and sign up .
On the next page, enter the domain name of the WordPress site you want to use with Cloudflare and click Add site :
Add WordPress Website to Cloudflare
Next, you will be asked to choose a plan. You can choose the free plan for now, as it offers all the features that most WordPress sites need:
Cloudflare Plans
2. Check DNS records
After you choose your plan, Cloudflare will scan your site's DNS records .
If you're not sure what's going on here, don't worry. The only thing you need to check is whether you see an orange cloud next to your main domain name ( which you should see by default - no action required ):
Review DNS records
Then, click Continue .
3. Update your nameservers to point to Cloudflare
Cloudflare will now offer you a new set of nameservers to replace your existing nameservers:
Change WordPress Sites Nameservers to Cloudflare
Nameservers are part of what you use to connect your domain name to your web hosting. When you switch to Cloudflare nameservers, Cloudflare can direct traffic to your website use this feature to:
Filter malicious traffic: Will send regular traffic to your website as usual, while filtering out malicious actors before they can reach your site.
Deliver static content from the closest server in its huge global network (the CDN part)
How you change your nameservers depends on where you registered your domain name. Here are tutorials for some of the most common domain name registrars: