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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Step 7: Click the Domains tab at the top of the window.
Step 8: Click your domain name, then click the Change link under your current 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.
Step 10: Go back to the Cloudflare tab and click the Continue button.
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.