How to Take Your Website Live: Configuring Cloudflare for Your Website Using HTTPS/SSL for a Secure Site

When you're ready to take your site live there are just a couple of steps that you'll need to complete. If you need help with anything, let us know. We realize most people are not familiar with this stuff... here are instructions for the access we'll need.

NOTE: Not all domain registrars or DNS management companies provide the same options.

Start with Cloudflare... a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

CDNs help improve site performance and while we use a CDN with our software you can add another layer. We recommend Cloudflare - they have a free service level which is quite useful and allows you to secure your site while speeding it up.

In addition to the performance benefits, they also have very good domain management capabilities so if your domain is managed by a provider with limited options this could be an additional value.

Create your Cloudflare account 

Visit https://www.cloudflare.com/a/sign-up to sign up. They'll walk you through a process and import in your current domain DNS settings (it's like magic and takes about 1 minute).

Now, you need to update your Name Servers

Wherever your domain is registered (often GoDaddy, Name Cheap, or Enom though we strongly recommend Cloudflare for your domain) you need to change your name servers to use the two provided in your Cloudflare account.

Once you've updated your domain with the Cloudflare nameservers, click the Check Nameservers Now button on your Cloudflare Overview page to expedite the process.

Update your Cloudflare settings

Once the domain nameservers are pointing to Cloudflare, you will need to begin updating the settings in Cloudflare.

To start making changes, click the DNS option and create (or edit) a CNAME for www to point to www.impact.locable.com, and a CNAME for @ to also point to www.impact.locable.com - see below.

Creating a Page Rule

Now that the CNAME records are added, we need to add a forward so if someone types in yourdomain.com they actually end up at www.yourdomain.com

To do this, go to Rules > Page Rules in the options in the left navigation:

Then click Create Page Rule. You need 1 rule as follows:

• In the URL box type yourdomain.com/* - using your real domain. Then click the Setting drop-down box and select Forwarding URL, you want to use a 301 Permanent Redirect.
• In the destination box type, http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 - the www and trailing $1 are important.
• Then click Save and Deploy Page Rule.

IMPORTANT - Ensure your other services remain active

Check to make sure that if there are other CNAMEs for anything else like "mail" you delete the CNAME and create an A record for "mail" that points to the IP address being used by the @ A record.

Next, we need to make sure your email will still work by updating your MX records. In most cases, MX records are shown where A record and CNAMEs are however it's possible depending on the provider that you use that MX records may be somewhere else like in the example below.

Once editing the MX record you'll need to make sure that the existing records don't point to your main domain (someurl.com) as that domain is no longer going to be in the same place. Instead, you'll need to update the record and prepend to mail.someurl.com. This assumes you had or created an A record for "mail" that points to the IP address that your old website is on.

Now, let's make the site secure!

SSL/TLS settings: In Overview, confirm the SSL encryption mode is set to Full.

Then click on 'Edge Certificates' and enable Always Use HTTPS and Automatic HTTPS Rewrites.

Other Recommended settings:

1. Security settings: In Bots, enable Bot Fight Mode

2. Speed settings: In Optimization click the 'Enable All Available Settings' button, then select Content Optimization and enable Rocket Loader™. 

3. Caching settings: In Configuration, enable Crawler Hints, and in Tiered Cache select Smart Tiered Caching Topology.

When you're ready to go live

1. Add your custom domain to your Locable account: Click Website > Domain Settings then add your domain (with the "www") and click the checkbox to make it Primary then click Save Website Details.

    

Once these updates are made, it could take minutes to hours for the SSL to be reflected but your new site is now live.

Check your site by visiting https://www.yourdomain.com (notice https not http), assuming it's resolving to our servers you'll see one of two options (if it's not resolving you just need to wait).

If you don't get the green Secure view above it means something on your site is trying to load an image or content using http:// - the fastest option is to just ask us to look and we can make a quick fix.

All done!