Looking to set up your brand new website's DNS? Not a problem at all because it is actually very easy to do! Now because you are using Cloudflare there are a few extra steps that we need to take for our servers to verify with your domain.
Due to Cloudflare having their own way to manage SSL Certificates we have to do a few extra steps in order to fully set up your website!
1) Visit your Cloudflare Dashboard
Once in the dashboard of your Cloudflare account find your domain that you have set up with us and click on it!
2) Click the DNS tab
Once you are on the DNS tab in Cloudflare you should be able to see all of your domain's DNS records.
3) Delete previous "A Records", or "CNAME Records" where you see the hostname as either "@", "yourdomain.com", as well as "www"
You need to delete these DNS records so that your previous records don't point your domain to the wrong server destination!
4) Create new DNS Records
Now it's time to create 2 new "A Records". The first one you will want the hostname to be "@" and the content destination to be the IP found in the settings tab for your domain in PixelPanel (ex. 11.111.11.111). For the second one, you will have the hostname as "www" and once again you will have the content destination as the IP exactly the same from your first "A Record" that you created!
5) Disable proxy
Now that you have created the two "A Records" in Step 4, you are now going to click on each of those DNS records and click on the orange cloud to disable proxy for those two DNS records! You should now see a grey cloud that says "DNS Only". Click save to ensure that these new settings are good to go! Now our server will be able to communicate with your domain to verify the SSL Certificate that comes with your plan!
6) Click the SSL tab
Before we go ahead and generate the SSL for your website we want to make sure that your SSL settings are set to "Full" within Cloudflare. If this is not set to full you will be unable to generate your SSL or will incur other complications.
7) Within the SSL tab click "Edge Certificates"
Within the SSL tab, you will see this subpage to view additional SSL settings.
8) Enable "Always Use HTTPS"
By enabling this setting your domain will always use a secure connection whenever allowing a visitor to view your website.
9) Enable "Automatic HTTPS Rewrites"
Within the same tab that you are currently in you are going to enable this setting to ensure any links you use on your website are always utilizing "https".
Make sure you have done all steps above correctly before moving on to the next step!
10) Visit the setting page
Once logged into PixelPanel via (https://pixelpanel.pixelhost.org) click "Manage Website" on the domain you are currently setting up.
11) Click "Enable SSL"
You will see a notification at the top of your page if your SSL has been generated correctly. If you are seeing an error please go through the steps again or contact our support team! You should now be able to view your website utilizing "https" as well as see a lock icon before your domain!
12) Re-Enable Proxy for DNS
Once you have successfully generated your SSL certificate on PixelPanel. You can now re-enable the proxy settings for the two "A Records" we created in step 4 for that extra layer of protection! You can do this by clicking on the grey cloud and making it orange again! Don't forget to save these settings once completed and you are now done with the setup process!
If you have made it to this point, your DNS Records are good to go!
