Cloudflare Setup Tutorial for WordPress

You'll learn to set up a free Cloudflare account for your WordPress website. This will give you a free CDN, plus additional security!

Cloudflare is also a great way to manage the DNS settings for your domain.

You'll also learn how you can integrate Cloudflare with some popular caching plugins, for example: LiteSpeed, WP-Rocket & W3 Total Cache

As mentioned in the video, I apply this method along with Cloudflare's origin SSL certificates to set up a Vultr High Frequency server for WordPress in an earlier video here, with superb results:
youtu.be/7vUl16bdW8Q

If you're interested in the starter template I used in the demo, it's a Kadence starter site - you can see the tutorial here:
youtu.be/Czr1kR2QmDU

Q:Is the Cloudflare plugin needed for this to work?

One thing I forgot to mention in this video is about the free Cloudflare WordPress plugin. In short, it isn't necessary to use it (source):
wordpress.org/support/topic/can-cloudflare-work…

You manage everything from your Cloudflare dashboard, so there isn't any real need to install the Cloudflare plugin.

However, it can be good to integrate Cloudflare with another page caching plugin (e.g. I like WP-Rocket, W3 Total Cache, WP Fastest Cache, or Litespeed if using a Litespeed server) these plugins are designed to integrate with the Cloudflare CDN and have the ability to input your Cloudflare API token which I described in the video.

One of the main benefits of using these plugins is that they will purge the cache when you update pages, posts or publish new content so the new content is immediately available. You can also get this feature from the Cloudflare WP plugin if you don't want to use one of these caching plugins.

0:00 Cloudflare Setup introduction
0:49 Adding the domain to Cloudflare
1:10 Setting up Cloudflare nameservers (DNS)
3:45 Integration with Caching plugins, LiteSpeed, WP-Rocket & W3 Total Cache
4:54 Finding your Cloudflare API key
5:44 Further learning: Using Cloudflare on a VPS