Initial Setup

[msmith2]

Hello,

To begin : I’m VERY new to CDN’s. Like… today new. So I apologize for the lack of knowledge on this subject.

I’m currently setting up Cloudflare with a Dreamhost hosted Wordpress site for my small business. I use WinSCP to transfer FTP files to my server occasionally, as well as modify some files directly. I also have a paid SSL cert already. Will setting up Cloudflare potentially change the way I have to go about FTP access, will I have to modify or buy a new SSL certificate, and will my current Email setup cease to work with it’s current server settings?

Any help greatly appreciated.

[Judge]

The only thing is that you will likely need to start accessing your website via the IP address (looks like 1.2.3.4) instead of the actual website name. Mail and SSL shouldn’t need to be touched and should continue working. If you have any issues or questions, feel free to ask on this community site again

[IotaSpencer]

You can also set up a subdomain to ease in this process.

Granted, you will get an alert box that says a record is exposing your origin address

I usually go by the following list in one of my other answers to decide to activate or not

Follow this to add it in, if you’re new

@IotaSpencer

1. Go to your main dash, where your zones list is
   • your zones list will show up by clicking ‘Home’ in the upper left of the dash if you’re on any other page
2. Go to applicable zone page
3. Click on the applicable zone
4. Click DNS on the top menu where all the buttons are.
5. If you have an A record like your hosting support told you, use the A record type,
   • Name: mail (for mail.domain.tld)
     • Your subdomain name, like above should go here if you have a domain example.com , your subdomain for mail would mean to enter mail in the input field for Name
   • Value: IP.IP.IP.IP
     • You put the same IP that you have for the subdomain in your cpanel here.
     • If the subdomain is mail.example.com and the IP you entered on cpanel was 127.0.0.1, you’d put 127.0.0.1 into the field.
   • TTL (Time To Live)
     • You can leave this as automatic to let Cloudflare handle its TTL, (using a custom TTL can be a bit advanced sometimes so I won’t elaborate on it)
   • Cloudflare Status(the orange/gray cloud
     • This determines whether the subdomain/entry will use Cloudflare’s extended DNS and HTTP(S) services to compliment the entry, otherwise you will only use the basic DNS service. which would expose the IP of the subdomain (when you do so, the Cloudflare panel may alert you that such a thing is happening ‘a record is exposing your origin address’)
6. Click Add Record and within 24-48 hours Cloudflare should be using its powers to compliment your subdomains’ DNS

[msmith2]

Okay so you’re saying for ftp i’ll need to use the new IP address rather than ftp.mysite.com ? I’m guessing the login credentials will be the same?

Again, sorry for the ignorance. It’s been a LONG time and my expertise ends with perl and html.

[domjh]

you will need to use the server ip, unless you set the FTP record to which will expose your origin IP. Yes, the login credentials come from your server so will be the same.

[msmith2]

Ok. an ip from dreamhost, not Cloudflare?

[domjh]

@msmith2

an ip from dreamhost

yes, will be the IP from your web host.

[msmith2]

I’m sure most of this will make more sense as I get into it, I just stopped at the initial setup screen with all of the records and the orange and gray clouds because I was like, Oh ■■■■, what am I about to screw up. LOL

[domjh]

Have a look at tutorial 1 and 2 here and see if they help, just ask here if you need any more info

https://domjh.com/tutorials/Cloudflare

They cover setup and and clouds!

[msmith2]

Will do. Thank you.