How To Temporarily Turn Off Cloudflare For Development And Maintenance?

A proxy is maintained by Cloudflare between your visitors and the server. When utilizing a testing tool or developing a website, this is not the acceptable practice. This post will explain how to disable Cloudflare in two different ways.

Note: You may have configured your website using Full DNS or CNAME settings with the Cloudflare plugin. This post explains how to use the CNAME approach, which guarantees easy DNS management with cPanel and includes numerous Cloudflare capabilities.

Two Ways Of Turning Off Cloudflare:

1. Turn off Cloudflare completely
2. Turn on the development mode

Turn Off Cloudflare Completely

This method is suitable for you if you wish to route the traffic directly to the server. The Cloudflare proxy is not used in this case:

1. Login to cPanel.
2. The cPanel home screen consists of a ‘SOFTWARE’ section, in this section, click on ‘Cloudflare’. The Cloudflare home screen will load.
3. Click on the ‘Domains’ option present on the top of the page.
4. The plugin will display the setting for the primary domain. You can select a different domain through the list box situated at the left of the toolbar.
5. Locate the CNAME record for your www
6. The value of the ‘Use Cloudflare’ column is set to ‘On’, Click on it to turn Cloudflare off. This step can take a few minutes for the DNS changes to completely propagate through the Cloudflare network.
7. When you no longer need direct access to the server, click on the setting to turn Cloudflare on.

Turn On The Development Mode

Use this option for making changes to your website. The Cloudflare proxy routes the traffic coming to your server but during this process, caching is turned off. You can see the changes done right away.

1. Login to cPanel.
2. The cPanel home screen consists of a ‘SOFTWARE’ section, in this section, click on ‘Cloudflare’. The Cloudflare home screen will load.
3. Click on ‘Settings’ option present on the top of the page.
4. Locate the Development Mode Setting and click on it to turn the Development Mode on.

Note : The Development Mode is automatically turned off after 3 hours. If you are making some changes to your website that will require more than 3 hours, you will have to turn it on again.