Cloudflare is one of the largest managed DNS providers available. They have a fantastic track record and provide a product that many of us at iThemes use regularly! If you decide to go with their products this tutorial will help you get your domain properly pointing to your iThemes Hosting account. It is worth noting here that Cloudflare is not a domain registrar and you will need to purchase your domain name elsewhere to use this service.
Getting Started
The first thing you will need to do is access your iThemes Hosting panel and get the IP address of your website. You will find that under Hosting > Site Information. You will want to copy this down to be used later on.
Once you have your IP address, you will then want to go to CloudFlare's site and go through the signup process and get your account created with Cloudflare or, if you already had an account, when you log into their system you should be greeted by a page similar to the one below.
Adding Your Site
As soon as you're ready to proceed, you will want to select the +Add a Site option. From there, you will go to a page where it will ask that you enter your site's domain which you are choosing to add.
You will then need to go through a number of different selection processes in order to determine the package you wish to have with Cloudflare. The Free option will provide you with everything that you need to direct your site to iThemes Hosting, however, we do recommend that you take a look at the other options to see if they may suit your needs more. Once you finish selecting the package, you will be brought to this page to set up DNS records.
Setting the DNS records
You will then locate the Type A that reflects your domain name. In this example, it would be the first option. There you will select the value box and then update the record to match that of the IP address that you got from the beginning of this tutorial. You will also want to select the cloud and arrow image at the far right under status and ensure that it shows the arrow going around the cloud as pictured in the image below.
You will see a number of other DNS records that could be adjusted. From that list, locate the CNAME www and also select the cloud so that the arrow goes around, it same as you did for the A record.
Once you've set your domain name with your iThemes Hosting account you can come back here and allow CloudFlare to handle your HTTP proxy if you choose by selecting those clouds again so the arrow goes through them!
The rest of the DNS records shown can be disregarded for now. You will come back to these once you have set up other things such as selecting an email service or if you choose to create subdomains for your site. Once you have updated the A record for your domain to point to your iThemes Hosting account you'll choose Continue. On this page, you will be directed to update your nameservers at your domain registrar to the ones shown. Cloudflare has a large knowledge base for updating nameservers at many different registrars so you can select the "I need help option" and look for your registrar there or review your domain registrar's support documentation for help on updating the nameservers.
With that, you are done! Once your nameserver changes update you will be using CloudFlare's DNS and your domain will be directed to your iThemes Hosting account!