Use your own domain

You made a website in FxFiles. Right now it lives at a long link. This page shows you how to put it on yourdomain.com instead — using Cloudflare, on their free plan.

⏱ ~15 minutes of clicking 💳 Free plan is enough 🧑‍💻 No coding

The pictures below are from Cloudflare on a computer. On a phone it is the same screens in one column — tap ☰ at the top left wherever these steps mention the side menu.

1Copy your website address

Open your website in FxFiles on the web, and find the Use your own domain box under the shareable link. Tap Copy link value for Cloudflare — that copies a line that looks like this:

/ipfs/bafybeiejegeowlh5warqnrjjmhbkf7hdjaiuhnpqajbktx6ta77urqmljy

The FxFiles website screen. A 'Shareable link' box shows a fxfiles.top link with Copy and Open buttons, and a line reading 'Want to use your own domain? Follow these instructions'. Below it, a 'Use your own domain' box shows the site's IPFS address in monospace with a 'Copy link value for Cloudflare' button.
The Use your own domain box, just below your shareable link.

Keep it on your clipboard. You will paste it once, near the end.

What is this?

It is your website's address on IPFS — the storage network FxFiles publishes to. It is not a secret, and it changes every time you regenerate the site. Step 4 covers how to update it.

2Get your domain into Cloudflare

Pick the one that matches you:

Create a free account at cloudflare.com, then type the domain you want in the Add a domain box on the home page.

Cloudflare account home. A card titled 'Add a domain' contains a text box with a domain typed in it, and below it the message 'This domain is available for purchase.' with a Buy button.
Available? Cloudflare offers a Buy button right there.

Press Buy, fill in your contact details, and pay. A .com is usually around $10–12 a year; other endings vary a lot.

Cloudflare 'Complete your registration' page showing the domain, a registration period of 1 year, automatic renewal switched on, a subtotal, and a form for registrant name, email and address.
The registration page. Your email is filled in automatically.
Good news — you can skip the hard part.

A domain bought at Cloudflare is already connected to Cloudflare. There are no nameservers to change. Go straight to Step 3.

3Point the domain at your website

In Cloudflare, click your domain, then scroll to the bottom of the left-hand menu and choose Web3. Press Create Gateway.

📱 On a phone?

There is no side menu on a narrow screen — tap the ☰ button at the top left to open it, then scroll down to Web3. Everything else is identical to the pictures below, just stacked into one column.

Cloudflare Web3 page for a domain. A 'Web3 Gateways' card says 'You have used 0 of 15 IPFS DNSlink Gateways' and has a Create Gateway button. In the left sidebar, Web3 is the last item.
Web3 is the last item in the sidebar. The free plan includes 15 gateways.

Fill in three things:

  1. Hostname — the address people will type, for example site.yourdomain.com.
  2. Gateway Type — choose IPFS DNSLink.
  3. DNSLink — paste the /ipfs/… line you copied in Step 1.
The Create Gateway form with the Gateway Type dropdown open, showing a single option under a STORAGE heading: IPFS DNSLink.
IPFS DNSLink is the only option — pick it.
The Create Gateway form filled in: Hostname 'site.example.com', description 'My FxFiles website', Gateway Type 'IPFS DNSLink', and a DNSLink field containing a path beginning /ipfs/bafybei. A Deploy button sits at the bottom right.
Filled in and ready. Press Deploy.

That's it. Cloudflare creates the DNS records for you and issues the HTTPS certificate.

The Web3 page after deploying. A table row shows the new gateway with status Pending, the hostname, type IPFS DNSLink and its description, plus Edit. Below, a 'Web3 Gateway DNS records' table lists a CNAME pointing to ipfs.cloudflare.com and a TXT record named _dnslink with the dnslink value.
Done. The two records at the bottom were created automatically — you don't touch them.
Which hostname should I use?

A subdomain is easiest — site.yourdomain.com, blog.yourdomain.com, anything you like. Nothing else is using it, so it just works.

To use www.yourdomain.com, first go to DNS → Records and delete any existing A or AAAA record named www. Cloudflare refuses to create the gateway while one is in the way.

To make the bare yourdomain.com work too, set the gateway up on www (or your subdomain), then add a redirect — see below.

Also make the bare yourdomain.com work

The gateway lives on a subdomain, so someone typing just yourdomain.com won't land on it. Cloudflare has a ready-made rule for this — you only change two boxes.

1. In your domain, click Rules in the left menu. You'll see a grid of Rule templates. Find Redirect to a different domain and press Create from template.

Cloudflare Rules overview showing a grid of rule templates including 'Redirect from HTTP to HTTPS', 'Redirect from WWW to root', 'Redirect to a different domain' and 'Redirect from root to WWW', each with a 'Create from template' button.
Use Redirect to a different domain.

2. The form opens already filled in with example values. Change these two, and leave everything else exactly as it is:

  • The Value box (next to Hostname and equals) — replace it with your bare domain:
    yourdomain.com
  • The Expression box under Then… — replace it with this, putting your own subdomain inside the quotes:
    concat("https://site.yourdomain.com", http.request.uri.path)

3. Press Deploy. That's it.

The Cloudflare redirect rule form. Field is Hostname, operator equals, value yourdomain.com. The expression preview reads (http.host eq "yourdomain.com"). Under Then, Type is Dynamic, the Expression box contains concat("https://site.yourdomain.com", http.request.uri.path), status code is 301 Permanent Redirect and 'Preserve query string' is ticked.
How it should look. Type, Status code and the tickbox are already correct — don't touch them.
Used www for your gateway instead?

Then skip all of the above and use the Redirect from root to WWW template in that same grid. It needs no editing at all.

Where your DNS records live, if you want to look

DNS → Records lists everything for your domain. This is also where you delete a conflicting www record before creating a gateway on www.

Cloudflare DNS records page listing A, AAAA, MX and TXT records for a domain, each with a name, type, content, proxy status and TTL, plus an Add record button.
The DNS records page. Most people never need to touch this.

4When you change your website

Every time you regenerate the site in FxFiles it gets a new IPFS address, and your domain keeps serving the old one until you tell it otherwise. Updating takes about thirty seconds:

  1. In FxFiles, press Copy link value for Cloudflare again.
  2. In Cloudflare, go to Web3 and press Edit on your gateway.
  3. Replace the DNSLink field with the new value and press Reapply.
The Edit Gateway form. Hostname and Gateway Type are greyed out and cannot be changed. The description and DNSLink fields are editable, and the button at the bottom right reads Reapply.
Only the DNSLink changes. Press Reapply.
I don't want to do this every time

Then skip the gateway entirely and use a redirect instead. Your FxFiles shareable link (the fxfiles.top/w/… one) always points at your newest version by itself, so it never needs updating.

Set it up the same way as the rule above — Rules → Redirect to a different domain → Create from template — but put your shareable link in the Expression box instead:

concat("https://fxfiles.top/w/YOUR-LINK-ID", http.request.uri.path)

The trade-off: visitors get moved to the fxfiles.top address, so that is what shows in their address bar — not your domain. Nothing to maintain, but it is not really "your" domain any more.

?If something goes wrong

Deploy does nothing, or the gateway never appears

A DNS record (A or AAAA) with a name matching the provided hostname already exists.

Something already answers for that hostname. Go to DNS → Records, delete the A and AAAA records with that exact name, then create the gateway again. Or just pick a hostname nothing is using, like site.yourdomain.com. This is the most common failure, and it is silent — the button simply appears to do nothing.

Cloudflare won't let me add my domain

This web property cannot be added to Cloudflare at this time.

Cloudflare blocks domains you are not associated with, and reserved names like example.com. Use a domain you actually own.

My gateway says "Pending" and won't turn active

Pending means Cloudflare is not yet answering DNS for your domain. Finish the nameserver switch in Step 2 and wait for the "domain is active" email. A gateway on a domain that never completes that step will stay Pending forever.

My domain went offline after changing nameservers

Most likely DNSSEC was still enabled at your registrar. Turn DNSSEC off there, then wait for DNS to settle. See Cloudflare's guide.

My domain shows an old version of my site

The IPFS address changed when you regenerated. Redo Step 4. If you just updated it, give it a couple of minutes and try a private window.

I followed an old tutorial and it doesn't work

Guides written before August 2024 tell you to point a CNAME at cloudflare-ipfs.com. Cloudflare shut that gateway down on 14 August 2024. Use the Web3 page as described here instead.

iGood to know