A Complete Guide on How to Create an SSL Certificate for Your Website Using Cloudflare
Are you trying to figure out how to create SSL? Check this comprehensive guide for tips on creating an SSL certificate for your website using Cloudflare.
Website security is essential in today's networked environment. In order to protect user data and increase website credibility. SSL certificates are important tools. But how to create an SSL certificate for your website using Cloudflare? SSL Certificates encrypt communications between websites and visitors. This ensures that information cannot be stolen or tampered with during transmission. The good news is that you can quickly get a free SSL certificate with Cloudflare to improve the website's security and performance. But how to use a Cloudflare SSL certificate?
By default, Cloudflare uses "flexible SSL," which protects the connection between visitors and Cloudflare but does not encrypt the communication between Cloudflare and your website. This is a security risk and can cause some websites (mainly WordPress sites) to have problems detecting HTTPS connections. The best way to solve this problem is to enable Cloudflare's Full SSL, ensuring that data is encrypted throughout the transfer.
This guide details how to use Cloudflare to generate and configure SSL certificates for your website's more secure HTTPS connection. Whether you're a personal blogger, a business webmaster, or running an e-commerce platform, this article will help you quickly navigate Cloudflare SSL setup and answer some frequently asked questions. Are you ready to improve the security of your website? Let's take a step-by-step look at how to use a Cloudflare SSL certificate!
What is Cloudflare?
Before figuring out how to use a Cloudflare SSL certificate, imagine your website is a busy shopping mall with thousands of customers coming in and out every day. Cloudflare is like an intelligent security and management system for the mall, not only intercepting suspicious people (malicious attacks) but also directing the flow of people (optimizing the flow) to ensure that customers can enter the mall quickly, safely, and have the best experience.
Cloudflare acts as a layer of protection between your website and the rest of the Internet. Its core features consist of the following:
✅ Website speed optimization:
Cloudflare caches your website content in multiple data centers around the world, so visitors in different regions can experience faster load times.
🔐 Enhanced Security:
Intercept malicious traffic before it reaches your server to prevent DDoS attacks, SQL injections, and other cyber threats.
🔗 SSL/TLS Encryption:
Cloudflare offers free SSL certificates, which ensure secure connections between websites and visitors and help prevent data breaches.
⚖️ Load balancing:
When your site experiences a surge in traffic, Cloudflare intelligently distributes the traffic. This reduces server load and improves site stability.
📊 Traffic Analysis:
Provides detailed data analytics to help you monitor site visits and optimize SEO and user experience.
Whether your website is a personal blog, an e-commerce platform, or a large enterprise portal, Cloudflare can help you increase its speed, security, and reliability to stand out in the competitive Internet environment. That is why it is important to understand how to create an SSL certificate for your website with Cloudflare.
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Benefits of using Cloudflare on your website
Using Cloudflare is like installing a super engine and comprehensive security system on your website. It makes access faster and effectively protects against all kinds of cyber attacks. Here are the main benefits it brings:
📊 Analytics and Insights
Cloudflare provides detailed traffic analytics to help you understand visitor behavior patterns, traffic sources, and potential security threats, so you can better optimize your site.
🗼Make your site faster
Cloudflare caches your website content in multiple data centers around the world and loads it from the server closest to the visitor. This dramatically reduces latency and load times for a smoother browsing experience.
🛡️ Improve cybersecurity
Cloudflare blocks malicious traffic to protect against DDoS attacks, SQL injections, malicious crawlers, and other cyber threats, ensuring that attacks do not bring down your servers.
📄SSL/TLS Encryption
When traffic spikes, Cloudflare intelligently distributes the traffic across multiple servers. This ensures that the site remains stable despite high traffic.
⚖️ Load Balancing
When traffic spikes, Cloudflare intelligently distributes traffic across multiple servers to ensure the site remains stable despite high traffic.
💰Cost Effectiveness
By reducing the load on the source server, Cloudflare can reduce bandwidth consumption and server costs, especially for websites hosted on VPS, VDS, or dedicated servers, making resource use more efficient.
Whether your website is a small blog, a popular app, or a large e-commerce platform, Cloudflare can help you optimize performance, improve security, and reduce operating costs to be your most trusted partner!
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Create an SSL certificate for your website using Cloudflare
Step 1: Sign up for a Cloudflare account
Before you can start using Cloudflare to protect and optimize your website, you need to create an account. The process is very easy and only takes a few minutes.
Visit the Cloudflare website
Open your browser and go to the official Cloudflare website.
Click the "Sign Up" button
Find the "Sign Up" button on the home page. And to click it to get to the registration page.
Fill out the basic information
Enter your email address and password on the login page and click "Create Account.
Verify your email (if prompted)
If Cloudflare asks you to verify your email, go to your email inbox to find the verification email Cloudflare sent you, and click the confirmation link in the email.
Finish Registration!
Once you've signed up, you can log in to Cloudflare and add your website for optimization and security. It is the first step to solving the question of how to create an SSL certificate for your website using Cloudflare. Next, we'll show you how to connect your site to Cloudflare.
Step 2: Connect your website to Cloudflare
Once you've signed up for your Cloudflare account, the next step is to connect your website to Cloudflare so it can begin providing security and performance optimization. This process involves scanning your DNS records and ensuring they are configured correctly.
Log into the Cloudflare Dashboard
Visit the Cloudflare website and log into your account using your email and password.
Click Add Website
On the Cloudflare Dashboard home page, locate the "Add a Website" button and click to enter.
Enter your website domain name
Enter your website domain name into the field.
Cloudflare Scans Your DNS Records
Cloudflare will automatically scan your existing DNS records, including A, CNAME, MX, and more. When the scan is complete, Cloudflare will display a list of these records.
Verify DNS Records
Verify that the DNS records that Cloudflare scanned match your hosting settings.
If certain DNS records are missing, you can add them manually.
At this point, your website has successfully connected to Cloudflare.
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Step 3: Select a Cloudflare plan
After successfully adding a site, Cloudflare will ask you to choose a plan that works for you. Suppose you want a Free SSL certificate and fundamental security and performance optimizations. In that case, Cloudflare's free plan will suffice. Paid plans have additional features. This is an essential step to solving the question of how to create an SSL certificate for your website using Cloudflare.
Step 4: Check DNS records
When you add a website to Cloudflare, Cloudflare automatically scans and imports your existing DNS records. However, automatic scanning may not be 100% perfect. Before proceeding to the next step, you will need to verify these records to ensure that your site is working properly.
Step 5: Update Your Domain Name Server
Now, it comes to another key step to create an SSL certificate for your website using Cloudflare. You will need to update your name server to point to the address provided by Cloudflare in order for Cloudflare to work. This step is critical because it's the only way Cloudflare can provide your website with features like acceleration, caching, security, and more.
Getting the name server provided by Cloudflare
In the Cloudflare dashboard, Cloudflare provides two proprietary nameservers, such as
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ns1.cloudflare.com
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ns2.cloudflare.com
Note: Cloudflare automatically assigns these nameservers, which may vary slightly for each account, so be sure to use the nameservers that Cloudflare provides for your website.
Log in to your domain registrar account
Go to your domain registrar (i.e., where you purchased your domain name); common domain registrars include
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GoDaddy
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Namecheap
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Google Domains
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Other registrars (if unsure, check the email notification or invoice when you registered your domain name)
Go to the DNS or name server settings for a domain name
The interface is slightly different for each registrar, but the general path is as follows
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Log in to your registrar account.
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Locate your domain management interface.
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Go to DNS Settings or Name Server Settings.
Replace the current name server with the one provided by Cloudflare
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Enter the name server provided by Cloudflare.
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Save your changes.
Wait for DNS propagation to take effect
After a name server change, DNS records need to propagate, which usually takes a few minutes to 48 hours to fully take effect.
Step 6: Enable SSL in Cloudflare
Once the name server update is complete, Cloudflare will officially take over your website traffic. Now, you need to enable the SSL certificate in Cloudflare, setting the SSL mode to "Full" or "Full (strict)." In order to protect user data and improve search engine rankings, your website must be securely accessible via HTTPS.
Step 7: Configure automatic HTTPS rewriting
If your website has SSL certificates enabled, but certain resources (such as images, CSS, JavaScript) are still loaded over HTTP, your browser may display a "not secure" warning. To address this issue, Cloudflare offers two options: Automatic HTTPS Rewrite and Always Use HTTPS. It ensures that your website's content loads over HTTPS and provides a safer browsing experience. This is why it is important to understand the use of Cloudflare's SSL certificate.
Step 8: Test your website
Once you've set up Cloudflare, the next step is to test your website to ensure that the SSL certificate has been successfully enabled and that everything is safely loaded over HTTPS. Checking the SSL configuration by accessing the HTTPS version of your website and using third-party tools can help you ensure everything is working properly. You can use the free plan to get a free SSL certificate.
Final thoughts
Website security is important in the modern Internet environment, and SSL Certificates are the foundation for ensuring secure transmission between websites and users. Cloudflare provides an easy way to enable free SSL Certificates to ensure that your website offers a safe browsing experience over HTTPS. That is why it is important to learn how to create an SSL certificate for your website using Cloudflare.
This guide shows you how to:
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Sign up for a Cloudflare account and add your website to Cloudflare;
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Select the appropriate Cloudflare plan and activate the free SSL certificate;
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Configure DNS to log and update your name servers to route traffic through Cloudflare;
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Enable SSL and select the best encryption mode (Full (Strict) is recommended).
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Configure automatic HTTPS rewriting and always use the HTTPS option to ensure that all website content is loaded over HTTPS;
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Test your site to ensure that SSL is properly configured and has a good encryption level.
Following these simple steps can improve your site's security, user experience, and search engine rankings. Whether running a small blog or a large e-commerce platform, Cloudflare's free SSL certificate can help you protect your site's data and provide secure access.
Skip Cloudflare SSL, build sites easily with Wegic
If you don't want a lean How to use Cloudflare SSL certificate, you can use Wegic to get a free SSL certificate. Wegic is a platform that allows users to build websites using AI. Users can use Wegic to build websites from scratch. Wegic's pricing structure is ideal for small businesses or individual users. It offers a permanently free version and has two paid options to choose from:
-
Basic version: $11.9 per month; annual payment can enjoy a discount of $9.9 per month
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Pro version: $19.9 per month, $15.9 monthly for annual payment, plus a 20% discount.
It provides a flexible option for small businesses or individual users who need more features. You can use Wegic to create an amazing website for your company and get free SSL certification! Besides this, Wegic has three smart AI assistants to help you create websites and give you ideas for website design!
Click the picture here to find out Wegic's best practices! ⬇️
https://wegic.ai/best-practices
At the same time, the annual payment offer further reduces the cost of long-term use. I hope this guide gives you some ideas about SSL certificates for your website!
Written by
Kimmy
Published on
Feb 26, 2025
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A Complete Guide on How to Create an SSL Certificate for Your Website Using Cloudflare
Feb 26, 2025
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Feb 26, 2025
A Complete Guide on How to Create an SSL Certificate for Your Website Using Cloudflare
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