Moving To CloudFlare

2 minute read

Description:

So currently, my site is gerrywilliams.ddns.net and it’s working fine. Just to learn new things, I decided to try some new things. Ultimately, I went from:
http site hosted free using noip.com => https site hosted on CloudFlare for a dollar a month for my domain name. Here are the steps I did:

To Resolve:

  1. First, I found the domain name gerrywilliams.net on Google Domains for $12/yr. Purchased.

  2. I then signed up for Cloudflare and had change my DNS records in Google Domains to point to theirs. NOTE: By doing this, you will lose basically all the services that Google gives you like free emails, ex: admin@yourdomain.com or tech@yourdomain.com. That’s okay, we will get those back another way (see step 5).

    • DNS servers at the time of this writing:
      • ali.ns.cloudflare.com
      • dale.ns.cloudflare.com

  3. The first thing I did was add an A record pointing my home IP address. So at this point you have one A record and the two NS records.

    • Record type = A
    • Name = www
    • Value = MyPublicIPinV4Format
    • TTL = Automatic

  4. Next, I setup the naked domain redirect.

  5. Next, I setup Mailgun for the email.

  6. Next, I setup SSL for my site.

  7. I then had to go back to step 4 and add the s from http => https.

  8. Lastly, I wanted an automated way to update my home IP automatically so I modified this script and set it as a scheduled task (next step). All credit goes to creator of the script (see link)!

    • Create a folder in your documents and copy this script
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    cd ~  
mkdir update-ip  
cd /update-ip  
touch updateip.sh
    • Copy and paste the following after modifying for your setup:
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    #!/bin/bash

# CHANGE THESE
auth_email="user@example.com"
auth_key="c2547eb745079dac9320b638fadsf5e225cf473cc5cfdda41" # found in cloudflare account settings
zone_name="example.com"
record_name="www.example.com"

# MAYBE CHANGE THESE
ip=$(curl -s http://ipv4.icanhazip.com)
ip_file="ip.txt"
id_file="cloudflare.ids"
log_file="cloudflare.log"

# LOGGER
log() {
    if [ "$1" ]; then
        echo -e "[$(date)] - $1" >> $log_file
    fi
}

# SCRIPT START
log "Check Initiated"

if [ -f $ip_file ]; then
    old_ip=$(cat $ip_file)
    if [ $ip == $old_ip ]; then
        echo "IP has not changed."
        exit 0
    fi
fi

if [ -f $id_file ] && [ $(wc -l $id_file | cut -d " " -f 1) == 2 ]; then
    zone_identifier=$(head -1 $id_file)
    record_identifier=$(tail -1 $id_file)
else
    zone_identifier=$(curl -s -X GET "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones?name=$zone_name" -H "X-Auth-Email: $auth_email" -H "X-Auth-Key: $auth_key" -H "Content-Type: application/json" | grep -Po '(?<="id":")[^"]*' | head -1 )
    record_identifier=$(curl -s -X GET "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/$zone_identifier/dns_records?name=$record_name" -H "X-Auth-Email: $auth_email" -H "X-Auth-Key: $auth_key" -H "Content-Type: application/json"  | grep -Po '(?<="id":")[^"]*')
    echo "$zone_identifier" > $id_file
    echo "$record_identifier" >> $id_file
fi

update=$(curl -s -X PUT "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/$zone_identifier/dns_records/$record_identifier" -H "X-Auth-Email: $auth_email" -H "X-Auth-Key: $auth_key" -H "Content-Type: application/json" --data "{\"id\":\"$zone_identifier\",\"type\":\"A\",\"name\":\"$record_name\",\"content\":\"$ip\"}")

if [[ $update == *"\"success\":false"* ]]; then
    message="API UPDATE FAILED. DUMPING RESULTS:\n$update"
    log "$message"
    echo -e "$message"
    exit 1 
else
    message="IP changed to: $ip"
    echo "$ip" > $ip_file
    log "$message"
    echo "$message"
fi
    • Then
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    chmod +x updateip.sh  
./updateip.sh  
# make sure it works

  9. To set as a Scheduled Task (crontab):

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    crontab -e  
#paste in:  
0,14,29,44 \* \* \* \* /home/gerry/update-ip/updateip.sh > /home/gerry/update-ip/crontab.log

  10. This will update my CloudFlare IP every 15 minutes and log it to crontab.log in the same directory.

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