DNS on Linux hosting: our nameservers or your Cloudflare zone

Your sites need DNS records that tell the internet where each name is. The DNS tab of your service page keeps them, and you choose where they are answered.

Before you start

• Your domain, and access to where it is registered.
• For Cloudflare: your Cloudflare account, with the domain added as a zone.

Choose where your DNS is answered

Open DNS and choose the Domain. Under DNS provider you have three choices:

• This Server's Nameservers: our nameservers answer for your domain. Nothing else is needed.
• Connect Cloudflare: your records are written to your own Cloudflare zone and kept up to date by themselves.
• Another DNS Provider: you copy the records to your provider yourself; Check Records shows which ones already work.

Use our nameservers

1. Sign in where you registered your domain.
2. Find the nameserver settings of the domain and set them to ns1.hyperdc.com, ns2.hyperdc.com, ns3.hyperdc.com and ns4.hyperdc.com.
3. Wait for the change to spread; it can take up to a day. The certificate then arrives by itself.

Connect Cloudflare

1. Sign in to Cloudflare and open API Tokens under My Profile.
2. Select Create Token, then Use template next to Edit zone DNS.
3. Under Zone Resources choose Include, Specific zone and your domain. For a domain such as shop.example.com, choose example.com.
4. Select Continue to summary, then Create Token. Copy the token; Cloudflare shows it only once.
5. In the DNS tab, select Connect Cloudflare, paste the API token and select Check Token.
6. Read the list of changes, choose what may replace your own records and select Write Records.

Verify: the tab says Cloudflare is connected, and the records appear in your Cloudflare zone.

Put website names behind Cloudflare's proxy

Under Cloudflare Proxy, choose for each website name:

• Proxied: visitors reach the site through Cloudflare, which hides the server's address and adds its protection and cache.
• DNS Only: the name leads straight to the server.
• Follow Cloudflare: the panel keeps what is set at Cloudflare.

With the proxy on, set SSL/TLS to Full (strict) at Cloudflare, so the proxy reaches the server over HTTPS. The server's attack protection reads your visitors' real addresses from Cloudflare.

Work with the DNS zone

• Add Record: enter the Name (@ is the domain itself, www is www.example.com), the Type, the Value, the Priority for MX records and the TTL (seconds), then select Save Record.
• Edit and Delete in a record's row change or remove it.
• Reset To Defaults replaces every record with the defaults of the server. Records you added are lost.

With Cloudflare connected, records you edit here reach Cloudflare within a minute.

Troubleshooting

Check Records shows Missing or Different. The record is not on the internet yet, or your provider has another value. A record you just added can take a while to appear.

Cloudflare says the zone is not active yet. Set the nameservers Cloudflare shows at your domain registrar.

Next steps

• HTTPS for every name: free SSL on Linux hosting.
• Back to the start: first steps on Linux hosting.