Question

Why can't I acces my website through its ip address after setting up CloudFlare?

Posted on April 29, 2018
CDN Ubuntu 16.04 Networking
Asked by Umut Canbolat

I was able to access my website by putting the ip address of my droplet to the web browser. Some time ago I started using cloudflare CDN. Now I am not able to access my website with its ip. I only can visit by using my domain name.

I know that the point of using CloudFlare is not accessing the server directly through IP address. But I couldn’t get how CloudFlare can block access through droplet’s own ip address. I only pointed my domain name to their nameserver and give them my droplet ip.

Thanks in advance.

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Ryan Quinn

DigitalOcean Employee

• May 1, 2018

Accepted Answer

Setting up CloudFlare alone will not have any effect on attempts to connect to your droplet directly. I run several sites using CloudFlare and more than once have mixed up IP addresses between the one that the domain resolves to (cloudflare proxy) and the one issued in the DO control panel.

Unless you have configured a firewall on your droplet to block traffic coming from elsewhere your web service should be available (even if it doesn’t display a site) when accessing your droplet in a browser with it’s IP.

Shivanand Sharma • April 30, 2018

When the site is served via cloudflare, you’ll need to use CloudFlares IP to access the domain. You can do a dns lookup and find the updated IP address of your domain. A site cannot function without an IP address.