CNAME not propagating (please ELI5)

[moumous87]

Premise: I am not a developer but I have to do the setup by myself, so please help with ELI5

I see similar tickets have been raised, but doesn’t help… So I have my DNS records managed in my Cloudflare account:
A -> mywebsite points to myIPaddress TTL:automatic Status: DNS & HTTP proxy
CNAME -> www is an alias of mywebsite TTL:automatic Status: DNS & HTTP proxy
Other settings: SSL flexible, Always use HTTPS on

But CNAME is not propagating.
I’m checking here: https://www.whatsmydns.net
Also, my expectation is that when I open the url mywebsite.com, I am sent to www.mywebsite.com. Am I understanding how CNAME works right?

[EDIT] I’ve noticed this weird behaviour: I open the URL mywebsite.com and what opens is https://mywebsite.com
Then, in the address bar I delete https:// and I hit the Enter key… and it opens https://www.mywebsite.com

And is it actually better to manage DNS records using Cloudflare? Or would it be indifferent if I used my hosting provider to configure my DNS records ? (I am using Digital Ocean)

[sdayman]

Digital Ocean doesn’t automatically connect your website to Cloudflare, so you’ll have to manage your DNS records here.

CNAME isn’t a forwarder. It’s an alias. So unless you say otherwise, either address will work and show that hostname in the address bar. Some configurations will automatically forward one to the other for canonical consistency (i.e. always use ‘www’)

If you post the domain, we can take a closer look.

[moumous87]

I think I might have found the answer here: CNAME record not propagating after 24 hours

Also if the requests are proxied via Cloudflare () CNAMEs are replaced with A records

which means, if I understand correctly, that even if my settings are all good, checking https://www.whatsmydns.net/#CNAME/www.mywebsite.com will show propagation failed on a global scale, but still https://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/www.mywebsite.com pass everywhere… so I got nothing to worry. Correct?

And when you talk about:

configurations will automatically forward one to the other for canonical consistency (i.e. always use ‘www’)
you are referring to Page Rule > 301 Forwarding, right?