Signed up for Wordpress CDN plugin, but seems to require DNS

[jgh84]

I have signed up for the Wordpress CDN plugin, however, Cloudflare is asking me to change DNS server for my domain to Cloudflare.

I cannot do this, as our public website is only one of the many things involved with our domain - our DNS is under control of another provider, and that isn’t going to change.

Is there any way we can use Cloudflare CDN by adding/ changing A or CNAME records, without the need to move the entire DNS over?

[epic.network]

Welcome to the Cloudflare Community.

You can use a partial setup via CNAME on a Business plan or higher.

Partial (CNAME) setup · Cloudflare DNS docs

[jgh84]

Hey, thanks for the reply!

Unfortunately, if you use a CNAME in AWS Route 53, the other DNS entries are overlooked -
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/ResourceRecordTypes.html#CNAMEFormat

I take it we can only add a CNAME to point to Cloudflare, and not an A record?

[epic.network]

@jgh84

the other DNS entries are overlooked

I’m not sure what you mean by that. There cannot be any other DNS entries at the same label as a CNAME RR, which means there will be no other DNS entries to be overlooked.

[GeorgeAppiah]

@epic.network

I’m not sure what you mean by that. There cannot be any other DNS entries at the same label as a CNAME RR, which means there will be no other DNS entries to be overlooked.

I’m also not quite sure what you mean: English is not my first language

But if I have a CNAME for sub.example.com, my understanding is that nothing should stop me from creating an MX or TXT record for the same name sub.example.com. And this is what doesn’t seem to be possible with Route53, from their documentation:

In addition, if you create a CNAME record for a subdomain, you cannot create any other records for that subdomain. For example, if you create a CNAME for www.example.com, you cannot create any other records for which the value of the Name field is www.example.com.

[epic.network]

@GeorgeAppiah

nothing should stop me from creating an MX or TXT record for the same name sub.example.com

That is not correct if sub.example.com is a CNAME. Broken software may allow it, but it has never been permissible to create such records. The RFCs have expressly forbidden the existence of such records since the dawn of time, or least the entire history of DNS. Section 2.4 of RFC 1912 explains this. DNSSEC records are an exception to this prohibition.

[GeorgeAppiah]

@epic.network

That is not correct if sub.example.com is a CNAME. Broken software may allow it, but it has never been permissible to create such records. The RFCs have expressly forbidden the existence of such records since the dawn of time, or least the entire history of DNS. Section 2.4 of RFC 1912 explains this. DNSSEC records are an exception to this prohibition.

Thanks for the correction. Cloudflare (and, to the best of my knowledge, every other DNS manager I’ve used in the past) allows it – and it’s always worked… so I assumed that must be the correct implementation of the standard.

[epic.network]

Wow! I could see that being allowed in Cloudflare with the Proxy enabled since the CNAME gets flattened, but I’m surprised that no error is thrown when it is set to DNS Only. Of course, as you mentioned, other software has allowed it. I probably even forced BIND to do it over 20 years ago before I knew better.