I am trying to register a domain: domain.co.za and when registering this tld you have to supply DNS servers while registering it.
For the last couple of years I usually added the site in my Cloudflare dashboard, then registered the domain and everything worked perfectly.
Now I just wanted to add another domain and Cloudflare tells me the site isn’t registered yet. doh - of course it isn’t but I need DNS records to register it.
Any suggestions on how to handle this?
Hi @ovidiu,
You have to set the domain to point to nameservers away from Cloudflare when you register it, you can’t point straight to Cloudflare. They need responsive nameservers to query. There are various free DNS services you could use temporarily or use your web host’s nameservers.
well I guess I’ll have to search for other DNS services.
But just to make the point clear: this has worked flawless for years with CF so I was just curious when this has changed.
I manage a couple of domains over the last (at least) 10 years and I have never used any other service than CLoudflare.
One more question, just so I get this right:
I will now find a free DNS service provider, and setup DNS records for the domain I intend to register.
I will then register the domain and use these DNS details.
After registration I will setup DNS on CF and add my site after which I will go to my registrar and change DNS to point to CFs DNS?
Is this correct?
Why is that? Why not simply register a domain, accept the default nameservers the registrar provides, then add the domain to Cloudflare and create the DNS entries you need and change the nameservers to the provided Cloudflare pair?
Not in the 3+ years I’ve used Cloudflare.
-OG
Sorry I didn’t reply again earlier, @ovidiu. You do need working nameservers before you can add to Cloudflare. It has been like this all the time I have been using the service.
Agree with @OliverGrant on nameservers 
The registrars I use automatically assign their Parked name servers whenever I register a domain. I hadn’t heard of registrars that didn’t do this. Didn’t even think it was possible before now.
At least one of the registrars I use gives you a choice when registering a new domain – you can use their nameservers, or enter custom ones (like Cloudflare, if it worked). It’s a great feature!
It’s a pain to theoretically have to wait 2 days to use a new domain because it was pointed to nameservers you don’t want to use for a few minutes.
This constellation appears when registering co.za domains straight from the registry, without any registrar inbetween: https://co.za - so there are no default NS you have to provide your own straight away.
And just for the record, I currently have 5 such domains on CF, all setup straight with CFs NS. The last such domain is from 2014 so yes, things might have changed since then.
Anyway lets close this issue here as it is what it is.
