I need to make a website as an artist showing off my work and I only have 1.5 weeks left. I’ve been spending hours each day learning about DNS, nameservers, hosting types, and more. I’ve finally chosen Cloudflare as my domain registrar and SiteGround as my hosting provider.
But I’ve hit a problem. Cloudflare requires me to use their DNS, which is fine, but I can’t figure out how to change the nameservers on SiteGround to point to Cloudflare. SiteGround’s guide only covers domains registered with them.
I’m confused. I thought nameservers pointed to DNS records, but since Cloudflare has my DNS, won’t that handle it? Do I even need to tell SiteGround where the nameservers are?
Also, when I picked a SiteGround plan, I had to type my domain name. But my domain isn’t even connected to SiteGround yet. How is that allowed? Couldn’t someone else use my domain name if they made an account first? I’d appreciate some guidance if anyone has the same setup!
Shay said:
Have you tried asking SiteGround’s customer support? You’re paying for their service, they should help you out.
Yeah, I might reach out to them. I just thought I’d ask here since support might try to convince me to use their DNS or transfer my domain, even if I don’t need to. At least here, I’ll get unbiased advice. We’ll see.
Since you’re using Cloudflare for DNS, your site’s visitors will reach SiteGround through the A record you set at Cloudflare, not through nameservers. It can feel a bit tricky at first, but once you set the A record to point to your SiteGround IP, Cloudflare will handle the rest. As for your domain name, when you set up your SiteGround plan, they just ask for the name to reserve it. The connection gets sorted out once you verify your domain later.
@Willa
So just setting an A record at Cloudflare pointing to the SiteGround IP is enough? I don’t need to notify SiteGround about Cloudflare’s nameservers? And about the domain name issue, it’s more of a curiosity—I was wondering how SiteGround can allow me to reserve a domain without verifying that I actually own it. Thanks for your reply!
@Morgan
Exactly, you’ll be good with an A record pointing to SiteGround’s IP. Don’t forget, if you want to use subdomains or email (e.g., mail.yourdomain), you’ll also need to set up MX records and other DNS settings at Cloudflare.
If Cloudflare is your domain registrar, you don’t need to change nameservers at SiteGround. All you have to do is configure your DNS records at Cloudflare to point to your SiteGround server. SiteGround should have given you the server’s IP address in their welcome email. If not, you can always ask their support for it. Once you have the IP, log in to Cloudflare and update your DNS settings. Here’s a helpful guide on how to do it: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/how-to-set-up-dns-records-for-cloudflare/586151/3.