• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Answer Your Tech

Wordpress How-to Guides

  • Writing
  • Settings
  • Jetpack
  • Navigation
  • Hosting
  • Getting Started
  • Themes
You are here: Home / Hosting / How to Configure Your Hostgator Wordpress Site With Cloudflare

How to Configure Your Hostgator WordPress Site With Cloudflare

December 7, 2016 By Matthew Burleigh

How to Configure Your Hostgator WordPress Site With Cloudflare

Protecting your website from attacks is a tricky and worrying business, and it is very difficult to manage yourself. One way that you can take a little bit of the weight off your shoulders, however, is by using Cloudflare as your first line of defense. When you combine Cloudflare with a cloud hosting company like Cloudways, you can achieve a really great site experience both for yourself and your visitors.

Cloudflare can protect your site from malicious activity, but it can also serve as a CDN that will deliver your files more quickly to your website visitors, especially those who may not be geographically close to your hosting server. Best of all, Cloudflare offers a free plan, making this one of the better choices that you can make in regard to setting up your WordPress site.

Our guide below will show you how to set up a Cloudflare account, then point your Hostgator-hosted domain name to Cloudflare’s nameservers. It can take up to 48 hours for your DNS changes to propagate around the world, but everything that you need to do can be finished in just a few minutes.

How to Point Your Hostgator Domain to Cloudflare’s Nameservers

Step 1: Head over to cloudflare.com, click the Sign Up button, then enter your information and click the Create Account button.

create a cloudflare account

Step 2: Enter your website’s address, then click the Add website button.

Step 3: Wait for Cloudflare to scan your website’s DNS records, then click the Continue button.

wait for cloudflare to find your dns settings

Step 4: Confirm that all of your DNS records are correct, then click the Continue button at the bottom of the screen.

Step 5: Choose your preferred plan, then click the Continue button.

choose a cloudflare plan

Step 6: Take note of the Cloudflare nameservers listed under Change Nameservers to (you should definitely keep this Cloudflare browser tab open, as you will need to know the Cloudflare nameservers in a moment), then open a new tab and go to the Hostgator portal at https://portal.hostgator.com/login and sign in.

sign into your hostgator account

Step 7: Click the Domains tab at the top of the window.

click the domains tab

Step 8: Click your domain name, then click the Change link under your current nameservers.

click the change link under nameservers

Step 9: Delete the current nameservers, then replace them with the Cloudflare ones from earlier. Click the Save Name Servers button when you are finished.

how to configure your hostgator domain with cloudflare

Step 10: Go back to the Cloudflare tab and click the Continue button.

continue on cloudflare once you have changed your hostgator nameservers

Now you will need to wait (possible 24-48 hours) for your DNS to update. Note that your site will not experience any downtime during this transition.

Matthew Burleigh
Matthew Burleigh

Matt has been working with WordPress and creating content using this powerful content management system for years. While he has written about many other tech topics, WordPress is one of his favorites.

You can read his full bio here.

Join Our Free Newsletter

WordPress guides and deals

You may opt out at any time.
Read our Privacy Policy

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

Related

Primary Sidebar

Join Our Free Newsletter

WordPress guides and deals

You may opt out at any time.
Read our Privacy Policy

Recent Posts

  • How to Add a TXT DNS Record in Cloudflare
  • How to Enable or Disable User Registration in WordPress
  • How to Install and Configure the WP Rocket Plugin
  • How to Make WordPress Not Organize my Uploads into Month and Year-Based Folders
  • How to Turn on Cloudflare Hotlink Protection

Site Info

  • Domain Name - Hostgator
  • Hosting - Cloudways
  • Theme Framework - Genesis
  • Child Theme - Smart Passive Income Pro
  • Site Speed - WP Rocket

Archives

  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • May 2022
  • July 2020
  • September 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • July 2018
  • December 2016
  • November 2016

Categories

  • Comments
  • Genesis
  • Getting Started
  • Hosting
  • Jetpack
  • Navigation
  • Plugins
  • Settings
  • Sidebar
  • Themes
  • Writing
  • Affiliate Disclosure
  • Privacy Policy
  • FAQ
  • About
  • Contact

Copyright © 2023 AnswerYourTech.com

 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.