i changed my registrar from godaddy to Cloudflare. i’ve seen a couple guides on Cloudflare about changing nameservers, but they all give the simple instructions, as it was very easy to change them at the popular registrars such as godaddy. but, now that my domain is registered with Cloudflare, i can’t find a simple “put your nameservers here from your webhost” kind of area. can someone please point me to this area or some steps? i’ve changed from freehostia to googiehost.
so, i just need a simple place to put my new nameservers for these values to get autocorrected or some steps on how to specify the new nameservers, which the above is all that i see referencing freehostia… so, it’s not clear at all how i would provide the new nameservers and clear any previous web host residue.
thanks for your time; i look forward to getting this resolved!
Currently, with Cloudflare Registrar you are unable to point the nameservers away from Cloudflare.
What you can do if to adjust those DNS records you mentioned to reflect those required by your new web host. You will probably need to change those A records to point to the IP given to you by your new host and adjust the MX record etc. as well.
Your new host should have somewhere in their control panel that you can check what DNS records you need and you can edit the ones at Cloudflare to match. If you can’t find them in their control panel, you could contact your host to check.
Domjh covered it perfectly, you need to duplicate the DNS (or zone) settings in the cpanel for your site into Cloudflare’s DNS section. That’ll basically be like you setting the NameServers to them. With that said Cloudflares nameservers will be considerably more reliable and closer to your end users than your host anyway.
I doubt Cloudflare will ever allow nameserver changes. It’s basically in their terms. You’ll have to switch out to another registrar in 60 days since switching if thats what you want.
I’m actually a little surprised that when you were asked to set the nameservers to Cloudflare you didn’t realize they would lock you down to their DNS services as your registrar. But then again this isn’t well documented and before Cloudflare I’ve never heard of another registrar that doesn’t allow it.
Ya, I don’t blame you the locked down NameServers is a nice gotcha and how they can probably justify their at cost registrar service. Their terms actually state:
7.2 nameservers
Registrant agrees to use Cloudflare’s nameservers. REGISTRANT ACKNOWLEDGES AND AGREES THAT IT MAY NOT CHANGE THE NAMESERVERS ON THE REGISTRAR SERVICES, AND THAT IT MUST TRANSFER TO A THIRD PARTY REGISTRAR IF IT WISHES TO CHANGE NAMESERVERS.
But of course who reads all of that. The catch though is that Cloudflare has one of the best free DNS services around, the catching feature also included is very good. So you probably want to use CloufFlare’s DNS anyway which needs the NameServers to begin with.
The 60 day note is in regards to being able to change to a registrar that does permit NameServer changes. You can only change registrars and subsequently add another year onto the domain registration once every 60+ days. Meaning you would be stuck with not changing nameservers for 60+ days and probably best (and fastest) to just duplicate the dns/zone settings anyway.