Content Delivery Network (or CDN) improves your website’s performance and reliability by caching its content across Cloudflare’s global network. At WHC, you’re able to use Cloudflare CDN, which helps pages load faster for visitors and reduces load on your hosting server.
Before You Begin
The Cloudflare CDN feature is available only for the primary domain of your hosting plan. Add-on or parked domains are not, yet, included.
Enabling Cloudflare will change your nameservers to Cloudflare’s.
If your domain is not hosted or registered with WHC, you’ll need to update the nameservers manually at your current registrar.
Once Cloudflare is active, DNS record updates follow the same process as usual. Refer to this guide for instructions: How to update DNS records (A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, SRV)
How to Enable Cloudflare CDN
Click Hosting & Websites.
Click Manage next to the hosting plan where you want to enable the CDN.
Scroll down to the Performance section and click Manage.
Click Enable Cloudflare CDN.
A message will appear with the required Cloudflare nameservers and a timer showing the activation period.
If your domain is hosted with WHC, you’ll have the option to Update Nameservers automatically.
If your domain is external, you’ll need to manually update the nameservers at your domain registrar.
Once the nameservers are successfully updated, you’ll see a confirmation message with the new nameservers.
Click Done.
Return to the Performance section to check the CDN activation status.
Managing and Monitoring the CDN
Activation timer: If the nameservers are not updated within 4 hours, the CDN setup will automatically cancel, and you’ll need to restart the activation process.
Propagation: It may take up to 24 hours for DNS propagation and Cloudflare to fully take over traffic delivery.
CDN Cache: Once Cloudflare is active, you can purge cached content from your Client Area by clicking Purge Cache. Use this if you make website updates that aren’t showing up immediately.
Performance improvement: After activation and propagation, you should notice improved page load speeds and better global availability.
Important Considerations
Disabling Cloudflare: Turning off the CDN will revert your site to WHC’s default nameservers. During this change, your website may be temporarily unavailable.
Email unaffected: Enabling or disabling Cloudflare does not affect your email service.
SSL Certificates: After enabling the CDN, your website will use a Cloudflare-issued SSL certificate, which will appear in your browser’s certificate details once DNS propagation completes.
Domain IP address: After activation, your domain will resolve to Cloudflare IPs — this is expected and confirms that CDN is working.
Nameserver wizard: While CDN is active, the WHC Nameserver Wizard will automatically recommend Cloudflare nameservers. Once it’s disabled, it will revert to the default WHC nameservers.