How to setup custom domain for Blogger using Cloudflare?

Here is why you probably using Blogger and Cloudflare. Both offer free services to everyone.

In fact, Blogger is completely free to use. And it is widely used by many bloggers around the world to post articles.

On the other hand, Cloudflare is one of the best popular service out there which help you in caching and protecting your website from attacks.

Also Read:

• Two reverse proxy and CDN services
• Brief information on Cloudflare custom firewall settings.

Cloudflare has other benefits like enabling SSL in a single click and installing apps on your website without updating the code of your site.

And people find it easy to manage all the domain under Cloudflare for easiness.

Steps to add a custom domain for Blogger using Cloudflare

Follow these steps to configure your custom domain name with Blogger using Cloudflare.

Add your domain to Cloudflare

The first process is to add your site to Cloudflare.

For this, you can click on the 'Add a Site' button provided on the top of Cloudflare dashboard. Then enter your root domain name and click on add site.

Then you can select your plan according to your budget. I have chosen the Free plan because it is enough for my needs.

After confirming the plan you will be asked to add the DNS records of your domain. For this time, we can skip this step and continue setting up the Cloudflare Nameserver.

So you need to change the default nameservers of your domain to Cloudflare provided one on the dashboard.

Change your default nameserver to Cloudflare

Copy the two nameservers provided by Cloudflare. Navigate to your domain registrar website and update/change the nameserver of your domain to the Cloudflare provided one.

In my case, my domain registrar was namesilo. So I need to login to their dashboard and change the nameserver to Cloudflare provide one.

That's it. Now you need to check for the nameserver update. You will need to wait for a couple of minutes to hours based on TTL setup of your domain.

Cloudflare will notify you about the process on the site dashboard if you have correctly set up the nameserver.

Add domain name on Blogger Settings

Navigate to Blogger settings of your blog. And goto the Publishing section. 

Add your custom domain name with either 'www' or another preferred subdomain.

When you try to save, you will be provided with two CNAME setup. Copy the two CNAME Records to your clipboard.

Update the DNS Settings on Cloudflare dashboard of your site

1. Navigate to DNS Settings of your domain name.
2. Add 2 new records with name and target you got from Blogger.
3. You can make the record proxied (orange clouded icon) to get all Cloudflare features for your domain name.
   
4. Also, if you need to forward your root domain to the www version of your blog. You will need to add additional A records with name as @ or the root domain name and IP Addresses as 216.239.32.21, 216.239.34.21, 216.239.36.21, 216.239.38.21

These are the steps to add DNS Records correctly.

Take care of the SSL or HTTPS Settings

For better SEO purpose you need to always serve users with an encrypted connection. For that, you need to do the following steps.

Navigate to SSL/TLS section on Cloudflare dashboard. And select the Flexible mode for SSL settings on the Overview tab.

Now, go to the Edge Certificates tab on SSL/TLS section. And Toggle ON the Always Use HTTPS option. 

This will redirect all the HTTP connection to the secured HTTPS connection on the Cloudflare Edge.

After doing this go to the Blogger settings page and make sure to Toggle ON the HTTPS availability and Toggle OFF the HTTPS redirect to prevent a loop in redirecting.

Make sure to Toggle ON Redirect domain from the root domain to the www version, if you have added all the 4 IP Addresses on the previous step.

Sometime you may need to wait for fully enabling the HTTPS connection.

Now you have successfully finished the process of adding a custom domain for Blogger using Cloudflare.

Also Read:

• Cloudflare Analytics for any website

Final Words

Using Cloudflare with a Blogger blog can help you get more features like installing apps, using workers and many more like blocking access to your blog in specific countries.

Setting up a custom domain for Blogger using Cloudflare is clearly explained in the above steps. Also, make sure to give appropriate time for nameserver propagation, DNS change, HTTPS certificate to issue, etc...

That's' it hopes you find this helpful.