There are some special things you need to pay attention to when using Cloudflare with our Discourse hosting.
In general, just use the most default setup. Don’t use any advanced caching rules and stuff like that. If you must, because you have other websites in your domain that require this, then just make sure your Discourse forum bypasses the Cloudflare servers by going to the DNS menu and pressing the orange cloud next to your Discourse hostname so it turns to grey.
Alternatively, read on.
Set SSL/TLS – Encryption Mode to “full”
Don’t set it to “Off” and definitely don’t set it to “Flexible” either.
Don’t enable any of the settings in the Speed/Optimization menu.
Just stay away from them. If you have other sites in your domain that require this, bypass Cloudflare for your forum as explained in the first paragraph of this article.
Do not enable Rocket Loader.
Do not enable Auto-Minify. If you have enabled Auto-Minify before, disable it and purge your cache immediately after that.
Do not redirect http to https using a page rule.
We perform that redirection for you, and if you do it using Cloudflare, we cannot issue SSL certificates for your domain anymore, and our servers and your forum will run into issues.
Use a CNAME
Using a CNAME record (and not an A record) allows us to move your forum to another part of our infrastructure in case of problems or upgrades.
But you should make sure you publish TXT and MX records as well.
Set up MX and TXT (SPF) records
If you’re using Cloudflare as a proxy, it will not publish all the DNS records you need.
Next to the CNAME pointing to your forum, you should have two other records in your DNS:
Type: MX / Priority: 10 / Value: mx1.discourse.communiteq.com.
Type: TXT / Value: v=spf1 include:_spf.communiteq.com ?all or a variant, see the article about DNS settings for your email.