Advanced Cloudflare management from its own interface

Reviewed on September 8, 2026 3 min read cloudflare cdn

Setting up Cloudflare and managing it are done in its own dashboard. The old cPanel integration is no longer available.

Log in to the Cloudflare dashboard with the account that manages the domain. These are not your cPanel or Hostsuar client area credentials. Select the right domain before changing an option.

Where to do each task

Need	Section to find	Check afterwards
Create or change a record	DNS	Name resolution and the service it points to
Set up HTTPS with the hosting	SSL/TLS	Origin certificate and HTTPS access without loops
Investigate a block	Security and events	Matching rule, time, URL and action applied
View traffic and cache hits	Analytics and caching	Tell requests, visitors and automated traffic apart
Publish file changes	Caching and purge	That the specific URL delivers the new version
Adjust protocols	Network	Compatibility and test results

Section names and locations may vary depending on the dashboard version and the plan. Cloudflare analytics describe the traffic it observes; that is not simply the same as human users or the statistics of a consent-based tool.

DNS and proxy

If Cloudflare is the authoritative DNS provider, change the zone here. A change in cPanel is not published automatically to Cloudflare.

Tell DNS only apart from Proxied: the first resolves the name and the second sends compatible web traffic through Cloudflare. The connection hostnames for email and FTP must keep the configuration suited to those services; do not turn on the web proxy for them.

HTTPS, rules and caching

With a valid, suitable certificate on the hosting, use Full (strict) to validate the leg between Cloudflare and the origin. Flexible mode can cause loops and leaves that leg without HTTPS.

Before changing a rule, save its state and test one request that should be allowed and another that should be blocked. If there is a false positive, narrow the exception to the real need. Do not turn off all protection to solve one specific case.

Do not force public caching on cart, checkout, admin or pages with user data. To publish a change, first purge the affected URLs and also check the site plugin's cache.

Ask for help with useful data

Note the domain, URL, time with time zone, HTTP status and, if shown, the Ray ID. Say which rule or setting changed and whether the problem affects all visitors. Do not share passwords, API keys or session cookies.