Custom staging domain without using DNS role?

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I've been trying out Enhance for a little bit now, testing as and when I get time. Ideally I'd like to keep management of DNS through Cloudflare (I don't want to use the built in integration if possible). I would however, like to utilise a custom staging domain for all staging sites. Is this possible?

Kosta

abridged I transferred my domain registration to cloudflare recently. My Biggest Mistake!
I have no idea how people like it…
Now I need to wait 60days to transfer it back…

Kosta

abridged No I don’t think is possible

xyzulu

abridged Is this possible?

It is possible, via Cloudflare, but you will need to manually add the AAAA or A records in the staging domain via Cloudflare. We actually do it this way.

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@twest You seem to have been through the same set of questions after going through the forums, did you ever get this to work? I tried using a wildcard record but couldn't get it to work.

Kosta

abridged better learn a bit about DNS it will answer your question and many more. Before you try anything that’s have DNS like Enhance mate
Try starting with typing in google search “what is DNS and how it works”

twest

abridged no it doesn't work, unfortunately.

I ended up disabling the staging/cloning in Enhance because I don't want any part of the cluster exposed outside Cloudflare, and I don't want to run dns servers. There's lots of plugins that work for staging sites, but what I end up doing is creating them manually on a subdomain addon site as needed. It only takes like 5 minutes to manually make it, and it's pretty rare people need it, not a big deal. It is unfortunate though, hopefully in the next year or two the staging system will get some much needed attention.

Kosta

abridged you can’t tell cf DNS servers about your staging domains without the integration… you Hanan have to do it manually every time you provision staging website

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Kosta A rather obnoxious reply coming from someone who I'm not sure understand things themselves considering you said "I have no idea how people like it..." in reference to Cloudflare.

Kosta

twest why you using and like Cloudflare by the way ?

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twest Thanks, I'm in exactly the same situation, I don't want to run DNS myself, and I'm not willing to forego CF protection and features, which I use in a similar way to you.

I think for now I may manually create them. I don't want to use a plugin for this functionality, but I don't mind adding a quick dns record.

twest

Kosta yeah you're right, I think I got it working behind CF as long as I manually created the entries in CF. The caveat is you have to use a root domain, so you can like go buy stagingsites-yourbizname.com, then add that in your Enhance settings. Then when a staging site is setup, it will be like staging.stagingsites-yourbizname.com, and you have to manually make that entry in CF.

It doesnt work if you try using a subdomain for the staging domain, like you couldn't use staging.yourbizname.com. That gives SSL errors from what I can remember, because your sites would be stagingxyz.staging.yourbizname.com, and CF wouldn't cover that third level subdomain for SSL.

twest

Kosta because of the additional control, security, speed. I have my panel blocked for many malicious countries/continents so they can't even load/see it. I also have Cloudflare workers that add custom features to my panel, like custom css styling overrides. It also adds a lot of detailed analytics for security, amongst the many many other amazing security features.

My company has had 100% Cloudflare coverage for like 6 years. Amazing how few hacks we're affected by, Cloudflare is surely a significant piece of the puzzle.

Kosta

twest what’s your cost per month to cf ?

twest

Kosta not much, we don't do the pricey enterprise accounts like some. Just Pro accounts for business related domains, and free accounts for customers (which a lot of them upgrade themselves to the Pro accounts).

webnestify

Of course it is possible. Designate staging domain and add wildcard DNS record like *.staging.com to server ip. When you stage to dev server or anywhere else, you don't need to add any DNS records. Simple..

ivansalloum

webnestify And what if I have two web servers?

CloudyBlake

I saw this posted somewhere here in the last year, but I also use cloudflare and what I do is have an entry in CF that is:

*.staging.hostingdomain.com

That way I can spin up staging sites without having to do anything additional in DNS. Works great.

adil

CloudyBlake

Only works if you have 1 web-server.