Adding a site

Adding a site takes two steps: deploy it, then point your DNS. Your site is live over HTTP right after step 1, so you can test it before any real traffic reaches it. HTTPS turns on by itself as soon as your DNS is correct.

1. Deploy the site

In the admin, click Add Site and fill in:

• Name: shown in your dashboard.
• Domain: your site’s domain, without www (for example example.com).
• Origin server IPv4: the IP address of the server hosting WordPress. Edge Caching fetches your pages from there.
• Preferred domain version: www or without www; the other one redirects to it.
• WordPress Multisite: only if your site is a Multisite network using subdomains.
• SSL: Let’s Encrypt (free, recommended), your own certificate, or none.

Click Deploy Site. Your site is deployed immediately and you land on the Point your DNS page.

Note

A site waiting for DNS counts toward your plan’s site limit, like any other site.

2. Point your DNS

The Point your DNS page lists every record your site needs, with its current status. Create them at your DNS provider (where your domain is managed):

Type	Name	Value
A	@	the IP address shown on the page
CNAME	www	your domain (or an A record to the same IP)
A	*	the same IP, recommended for Multisite only

If you added alias domains (other domains that redirect to your site), each one is listed too.

Before you switch DNS

• Using Cloudflare for DNS? Set these records to DNS only (grey cloud), not proxied.
• Remove old IPv6 (AAAA) records for these names. Certificate checks can use them, and they’d still point to your previous host.

What the statuses mean

Status	Meaning
Points here	The record is correct.
Not found	The record doesn’t exist yet.
Wrong address	The record exists but points somewhere else; the page shows where.
Remove AAAA	An IPv6 record still points to your previous host.
Propagating	Your change is visible to some DNS servers but not all yet.
Couldn’t check	The check failed temporarily; it retries on its own.

DNS changes usually show up within 5 to 60 minutes. The page re-checks every 30 seconds, and Check again re-checks immediately.

When everything points here

As soon as every required record shows Points here, your site is activated: its traffic goes through Edge Caching, and if you chose Let’s Encrypt, HTTPS is switched on. The certificate is usually issued within a minute.

You don’t need to keep the page open. Edge Caching keeps checking every few minutes and activates your site on its own; your dashboard shows a Pending DNS badge until then.

Test before switching

Add the line shown on the DNS page to your computer’s hosts file (it looks like 203.0.113.10 example.com www.example.com). Your computer then sees the site through Edge Caching while everyone else still reaches your old server. Remove the line once you’ve switched DNS.

Why HTTPS waits for DNS

Let’s Encrypt only issues a certificate after checking that your domain points to the server asking for it. Asking too early fails that check, and repeated failures can get your domain temporarily blocked by Let’s Encrypt. Waiting for DNS avoids this entirely.

The same check applies later: turning HTTPS on, or adding an alias domain or the www version to a site that already uses HTTPS, requires those names to point to Edge Caching first. If they don’t, the admin tells you which record to fix.

Sites using your own certificate don’t involve Let’s Encrypt, so they don’t wait.