Moving hosting for a site already on Cloudflare

[CFNewbie]

I have a website that is hosted on Host Gator (and the name servers for the domain is already pointing to Cloudflare). I want to move the hosting to Amazon Lightsail and have already made a copy of the site from Host Gator to Amazon. I have an IP address associated with the copied site.

I’m not sure what I need to do in order for the domain to point to that IP – and still use Cloud Flare. Normally, the name server is pointing to the host, then I just update with Cloudflare’s name servers. What do I do when the domain is already using Cloudflare?

[jordan.idler]

You need to update your A records on your root domain and www., or any other subdomain that you want to point to your Lightsail!

Here is some documentation to help you:
https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/360019093151-Managing-DNS-records-in-Cloudflare

https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/dns-records/dns-a-record/

P.s. I just moved to Lightsail myself for my personal blog, and I am very happy with it! I wish you the best with your website.

[CFNewbie]

So, I go to my domain registrar and update the name servers to point to Amazon? Then I’ve eliminated Cloudflare, right?

[domjh]

Hi @CFNewbie,

@CFNewbie

and still use Cloudflare

@CFNewbie

update the name servers to point to Amazon?

If you want to continue using Cloudflare, you don’t want to change the nameservers away. You will want to edit your DNS records in Cloudflare to point to your new host.

Deprecated - Moving your site to a new host

This tutorial is deprecated in favour of Manage DNS records · Cloudflare DNS docs

Archive

What do I need to do at Cloudflare if I change my web host? If you change the provider hosting your website, most of the work will need to be done there. You will need to add everything to your new host. Once this is done, however, you will need to update your DNS records in Cloudflare to point to your new host. To do this, you will need to find out what DNS records you need from your new host. These will…

If, however, you no longer want to use Cloudflare on the site, then yes - just change your nameservers to point elsewhere.

[CFNewbie]

I’m planning to use Cloudflare on a site that already has SSL. I would prefer to use Cloudflare’s free SSL feature. Will I have any issues when I update the name servers to point to Cloudflare?

By the way, the site’s hosting will be moved over to Amazon Lightsail first. Not sure if that will cause problems with SSL.

[jordan.idler]

I am a bit confused here. You said the domain already points to Cloudflare. Therefore, all you need to do is update Cloudflare to point to the new hosting provider. Currently the chain is Domain.com → Cloudflare → HostGator. And you will need to sign in to Cloudflare to change it to Domain.com → Cloudflare → Amazon, click edit next to the A name records for your root domain and www., and change them to the IP address on LightSail. As long as you are using CF and have SSL enabled, your SSL will work.