What are nameservers?
DNS is like a phone book for the internet. It turns a website name into a number that computers understand. Nameservers are the computers that hold this phone book entry for your domain. When you change nameservers, you decide who controls your DNS.
What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is a third-party service that sits between your visitors and your hosting. It can speed up pages by keeping copies of them, and it can block some bad traffic. Ask Hostvento support if it is supported on your plan.
Why people use it
- Pages can load faster.
- It can help against some attacks.
- It gives you a simple DNS screen.
Things to think about
- Your DNS records will now be managed at Cloudflare, not at your old place.
- Email records must be copied exactly, or email can stop working.
- Changes can take some hours to spread over the internet.
Steps to switch
- Create an account at the Cloudflare website.
- Choose to add a site and type your domain name.
- Pick a plan that suits you.
- Cloudflare scans your current DNS records. Check the list against your old records. Add anything that is missing, especially MX records, which handle email.
- Cloudflare shows you two new nameservers. Copy them.
- Log in to your client area.
- Open Domains and choose My Domains.
- Pick your domain and open the nameserver option.
- Choose to use custom nameservers. Paste the two from Cloudflare.
- Save the change.
- Go back to Cloudflare and ask it to check. It tells you when your site is active.
Tip: If your domain is registered elsewhere, change the nameservers at that registrar instead.
If something goes wrong
Put your old nameservers back. They are in your welcome email, or you can open a support ticket.
Quick recap
- Nameservers decide who controls your DNS.
- Cloudflare can speed up and protect a site.
- Copy all DNS records first, especially email ones.
- Change the nameservers in your domain settings.
- You can switch back if needed.