Cloudflare is a free service that acts as a reverse proxy in front of your website. It provides a CDN (faster page loads worldwide), DDoS protection, and free SSL. This guide shows how to set it up with your TPC Hosting website.

Step 1 — Create a Cloudflare account

1. Go to https://cloudflare.com and click Sign Up.
2. Enter your email address and create a password.

Step 2 — Add your domain to Cloudflare

1. After signing in, click Add a Site.
2. Enter your domain name (e.g. yourdomain.com) and click Add Site.
3. Select the Free plan and click Continue.

Step 3 — Review your DNS records

1. Cloudflare will scan your existing DNS records and display them.
2. Review the list and make sure all records are present — especially your A record (pointing to your server IP), MX records (for email), and any CNAME records.
3. For records you want to proxy through Cloudflare (websites), the orange cloud icon should be enabled. For email (MX records) and subdomains used for mail, the cloud should be grey (DNS only).
4. Click Continue.

Step 4 — Update your nameservers

1. Cloudflare will show you two nameservers to use (e.g. alice.ns.cloudflare.com and bob.ns.cloudflare.com). These are unique to your account.
2. Log in to your domain registrar.
3. Replace your current nameservers (ns1.b2b-server.net and ns2.b2b-server.net) with the two Cloudflare nameservers.
4. Save the change at your registrar.
5. Back in Cloudflare, click Done, check nameservers.

Step 5 — Wait for activation

Cloudflare will send you an email when your domain is active (usually within 5–30 minutes). Once active, your traffic will flow through Cloudflare.

Important notes about email

Cloudflare only proxies web traffic. Your email continues to be handled by TPC Hosting. Make sure your MX records in Cloudflare point to the correct mail server and are set to DNS only (grey cloud), not proxied.