Point my domain name to mysite.pages.dev without setting up Custom Domain?

[riccardo.rogazione]

I’m using Cloudflare Pages and have a domain name purchased with Cloudflare as registrar.
Now, as far as I understand, in order to point my domain name (purchased with Cloudflare as registrar) to my website (deployed from GitHub to Cloudflare Pages), the only option is setting up a Custom Domain (Custom domains · Cloudflare Pages docs).

Is this really the only way in this specific case?

Also, I see that by default, when setting up a Custom Domain on Cloudflare Pages, Cloudflare sets the DNS CNAME to Proxy.
This will cause an higher response time due to the extra proxy hop. Isn’t so?

I’m wondering if there isn’t a better way.

So I created a root domain record:
Type Name IPv4 address Proxy status
A @ 192.0.2.1 Proxied
as per: Create root domain · Cloudflare DNS docs

And then I created a subdomain record:
Type Name IPv4 address Proxy status
A www 192.0.2.1 Proxied
as per: Create subdomain · Cloudflare DNS docs

The last step left was to redirect root domain to a subdomain by creating a Single Redirect (Create a redirect rule in the dashboard · Cloudflare Rules docs);

but before trying this last step, I noticed that I was getting Error 522 connection timed out, with this link:

Troubleshooting Cloudflare 5XX errors · Cloudflare Support docs

explaining that “If you are using Cloudflare Pages, verify that you have a custom domain set up and that your CNAME record is pointed to your custom Pages domain.”

So, really there’s no other way to point my domain name (purchased with Cloudflare as registrar) to my website (deployed from GitHub to Cloudflare Pages) other than setting up a Custom Domain?

Any help or suggestion is highly appreciated. Thanks.

[cscharff]

@riccardo.rogazione

This will cause an higher response time due to the extra proxy hop

There is no proxy hop. All Cloudflare services run on all metals in the data center.

[riccardo.rogazione]

Thanks @cscharff, nice to know. But, there’s no other way to point my domain name?

[sdayman]

@riccardo.rogazione

there’s no other way to point my domain name?

There’s no good reason to. As @cscharff mentioned, there’s no proxy hop. Cloudflare maps all hostnames to their destinations.

Custom Domain is essentially a Custom Hostname. If x.com actually points to another account via CNAME, as soon as a request for x.com comes into Cloudflare, that request immediately goes to the origin that hosts that requested hostname.

Again, as cscharff pointed out, no extra hop, so no higher response time. No reason to not use a Custom Domain.

[riccardo.rogazione]

Thanks @sdayman. I will go with Custom Domain then.
But I’ve noticed that – as I’m using Zero Trust to limit access to my *pages.dev to a few email addresses only – by using Custom Domain with CNAME pointed to my domain name, Zero Trust will block my domain name also. Do you know any workaround for this?

[epic.network]

What is your objective? I’m unclear on your motivation. Are you wanting to allow public site access to vistors who arrive via your custom domain while simultaneously limiting access to anyone who uses the project.pages.dev name?

This won’t do exactly that, but might be close enough to do something that meets your goals.

Prevent Direct access to pages.dev domain and only via main domain

Hi there! If you don’t need to access the site through your Pages subdomain at all, you can redirect visitors to your custom domain using Bulk Redirects. [Screenshot_20220201_075342] If you still want the ability to access preview deployments, simply uncheck “Include subdomains”. If you need help setting up Bulk Redirects, please take a look at the documentation.

[riccardo.rogazione]

Thank you @epic.network
Yes, I’d like to keep my *.pages.dev protected with Zero Trust in order to let my dev team preview the deployments before pubblication. I was looking before to this Bulk Redirects, I like it better than Single Redirect and I think I will use it. But I guess that the problem with Zero Trust protection on *.pages.dev is that even randomly generated hash for the preview deployment will be redirected. Isn’t so?

[epic.network]

The post that I linked said to uncheck Include subdomains to accommodate deployment previews. I don’t know if that will fit your goal.

For in depth discussion of Cloudflare Access, you probably want to post a topic in the Zero Trust Access category.

[riccardo.rogazione]

Yes, I was reading about the unckeck Include subdomains. It’s not clear to me how this will operate in effects, so I guess I will have to try it. In case, I will move the discussion to Zero Trust category. Thank you @epic.network