Hi all - first-timer here so I hope you’ll be gentle with me…
I’m thinking of setting up a blog/website. I’m looking around for providers to host it.
However, there is one must-have for me - I want to remain anonymous.
So, I have a few questions -
Could Cloudflare help me to set up the site (eg, by providing a template for it)? I have some programming experience but this would be my first website so I do have a lot to learn, I’ll admit that!
If a template were provided along with a few instructions, I should be fine from there.
Registering the domain - could I do that anonymously?
Payment - how could that be done anonymously? ( I’m guessing the obvious answer is Bitcoin but I’ve never used that and am a bit unsure about it. Are there other ways that I could pay but still remain as anonymous as possible? )
That should do for now. Many thanks in advance - bye for now -
No, Cloudflare doesn’t provide any templates or assistance in creating a site, and has only limited “hosting” options. Cloudflare is a developer platform more than a consumer-facing hosting provider.
If you register via Cloudflare, you will need to provide the usual billing information and thus won’t be anonymous to Cloudflare. They will, however, redact all your information on the domain registration and allow you to be anonymous to the world.
Cloudflare doesn’t do Bitcoin or any anonymous payment methods.
Thanks very much for that! That’s really useful - much appreciated!
That sounds absolutely fine - I have no problem at all with providing my details to Claoudflare.
The redaction of my info on the domain registration would be sufficient for me.
The “no Bitcoin” is fine too. I much prefer using conventional payment methods.
You mentioned that Cloudflare has only “limited hosting options”. Is there a link that gives details on that? I’m wanting to know what is required, duration of available plans (eg 6 months, 1 year, etc), how much it would cost - that kind of thing.
The only real hosting service is Cloudflare Pages, which is free for static sites (you still pay for the domain name of course). You can use your site-generation tool of choice, such as Hugo, but there is no “website builder” or template or other tools provided by Cloudflare. You would have to find your site builder on your own.
Traditional web hosting from most hosting providers works with Cloudflare as well. When you set up your domain on Cloudflare you enable the proxy and Cloudflare will then hide your IP address and the location of your actual hosting server. This is also free for simple use cases like yours.
proxy and Cloudflare will then hide your IP address and the location of your actual hosting server. This is also free for simple use cases like yours.