Cloudflare and FREE DNS

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What is Cloudflare DNS?

"Powering over 38% of managed DNS domains, Cloudflare runs one of the largest authoritative DNS networks in the world." Cloudflare DNS is a DNS service powered by a large anycast network. It is one of Cloudflare's many services, along with their content delivery network, firewall service, and others.

See Cloudflare's website for more details: https://www.cloudflare.com/dns/

Using Cloudflare DNS with Enwau

To add or edit DNS records for a domain registered on (or transferred to) Enwau in conjunction with Cloudflare DNS, go to your Dashboard, then select the 'Manage Domains' option, and find the domain you wish to add/edit records for by searching in the bar above the list of domains. Click on the domain you wish to change.

On the left hand menu, choose the 'Nameservers' option, and verify that you are using Cloudflare DNS. If Cloudflare DNS is in use, the Cloudflare option should be selected and the text "This domain is being managed by CloudFlare" should appear. For other DNS providers view the following help articles.

• BASIC DNS.
• Connecting to third-party DNS.

Selecting 'Cloudflare' DNS from the Enwau Dashboard

If you wish to use Cloudflare but it is not set up, you need to login or create an account. If creating an account, simply click "Create an account" and follow through the steps to create a free account, before returning to the DNS page using the steps above.

Once you have definitely logged in to Cloudflare and confirmed you are using Cloudflare DNS, click the 'DNS' option in the left hand menu. From this page you can add or edit DNS records for this domain. Cloudflare's servers may take a few seconds to load all your domains. To add a DNS record, click the 'Add DNS record' record button at the top of the page, or if you wish to edit an existing record, click the pencil icon on the row of that record in the table. This will bring you to a page allowing you to specify details on the new DNS record.

Adding/editing DNS records

Editing Cloudflare DNS records directly from your Dashboard.

If you are creating a new record, you must choose the type of record (e.g. A, CNAME). The type you need depends on the function of the record. For instance, A records are commonly used to map domain hostnames to IPv4 addresses, AAAA records are normally used for mapping hostnames to IPv6 addresses, and CNAME records to make one hostname redirect to another.

Editing a Cloudflare DNS record.

A record (sometimes known as a name or entry) represents the subdomain to which the record applies. For instance, the root domain is represented by an '@' symbol, a particular subdomain as just the subdomain itself (e.g. www.example.com would be have a domain record of 'www'), and a record applying to all subdomains is represented by a '*' symbol.

The value, also known as the destination or target, denotes where the chosen record points. This will normally be an IP address or another hostname.

Time to Live (TTL) and change propagation

Finally, Time to Live can normally be left as Automatic. This defines how long this record is cached for on DNS servers. This can change how quickly changes to where your domain points take effect.

Cloudflare proxy

Cloudflare offers to route all traffic through your domain through their services, thereby cloaking your IP address. To enable this service if you need it, set the Cloudflare proxy option to "Yes".

When you have finished creating or editing the record, hit the Save button. This will save the record. Changes may take a while to take effect, but should normally be fully active within 24 hours. This is due to time taken to propagate these settings through DNS servers across the globe.

Adding a record to Cloudflare (what does a greyed out domain represent?)

If a box is greyed out slightly, this means the DNS record is currently stored on our system but has not yet been pushed to Cloudflare's servers. If you wish to add a record to the Cloudflare service, simply hit the orange Cloudflare cloud button to the right of the record in the table. This will push the record to Cloudflare's servers. If you have directly removed a record from Cloudflare using their service, and thus do not want this record to be stored on our system, we recommend that you delete the record.