Setting Up Cloudflare with Your Power Down Server

Why Use Cloudflare?

Cloudflare acts as a reverse proxy between visitors and your server, providing free CDN caching, DDoS protection, WAF, SSL, and detailed analytics — without any code changes to your application.

Step 1: Create a Cloudflare Account and Add Your Site

1. Go to cloudflare.com and create a free account
2. Click Add a Site and enter your domain
3. Select the Free plan
4. Cloudflare scans and imports your existing DNS records
5. Review the imported records — verify A records point to your server IP

Step 2: Update Nameservers at Your Registrar

Cloudflare gives you two nameservers like:

ns1.cloudflare.com
ns2.cloudflare.com

Log in to your domain registrar and replace the existing nameservers with these. Propagation takes 24–48 hours, often much less.

Step 3: Understand the Orange vs Gray Cloud

• Orange cloud (proxied): Traffic routes through Cloudflare — CDN, DDoS protection, and WAF apply
• Gray cloud (DNS only): Cloudflare just resolves DNS, traffic goes directly to your server

Enable the orange cloud for your main A records (www, @). Keep MX records gray — email should never be proxied.

Recommended Security Settings

Setting	Where	Recommended Value
SSL/TLS Mode	SSL/TLS → Overview	Full (Strict) — requires valid cert on server
Always HTTPS	SSL/TLS → Edge Certificates	On
HSTS	SSL/TLS → Edge Certificates	Enable (max-age: 6 months)
Security Level	Security → Settings	Medium
Bot Fight Mode	Security → Bots	On
Browser Integrity Check	Security → Settings	On

Caching Static Assets

Go to Caching → Configuration:

• Set Browser Cache TTL to 1 month for static sites
• Enable Always Online to serve cached pages if your server is down

Purge Cache After Deployment

# Using Cloudflare API
curl -X POST "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/ZONE_ID/purge_cache"   -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN"   -H "Content-Type: application/json"   --data '{"purge_everything":true}'