How to set up Cloudflare

Posted on August 26, 2020

Cloud

Website performance — the speed in which web pages are downloaded and displayed on a user’s web browser — should be a primary consideration when delivering great digital government services.

Cloudflare offers a free service that helps to address key areas of performance, including:

  • Security: Firewall, DDoS protection, rate limiting, bot management, VPN
  • Performance: Intelligent routing, mobile & image optimization, video, cache
  • Reliability: Load balancing, DNS, virtual backbone

ProudCity recommends that government websites use Cloudflare to provide an added layer of performance protection.

How it works:

  1. Create a Cloudflare account.
  2. Import your current DNS settings as part of the Cloudflare onboarding wizard.

Note

.gov domains: If you’re setting up a .gov domain for the first time and want to use Cloudflare, set up your Cloudflare account first, as  they require a DNS (domain name server) host as part of the process.

DNS interruption: When you’re setting up Cloudflare, there may be some short-term DNS issues that could cause users to not have access to the website.

Steps

  1. Submit a ticket with the message “We are starting Cloudflare setup” in the description.
  2. Sign up for Cloudflare.
  3. Register for the free plan.
  4. Follow Cloudflare instructions for domain setup.
  5. Update your support ticket that you have completed the Cloudflare setup.

Do’s and don’ts

Do

  • Set up Cloudflare before publicly announcing the launch of your new website.

Don’t

  • Wait to set up Cloudflare after you have publicly launched your website.
  • Set your domain A record as a “Proxy” it must be set to DNS Only
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