Cloudflare Setup Instructions for sempers.com

Purpose: Fix wildcard subdomain issue (*.sempers.com serving duplicate content) by putting Cloudflare in front of SiteGround. This is a free alternative to SiteGround Expert Care.

Time: ~30 minutes Cost: Free (Cloudflare Free tier) Risk: Low — SiteGround stays as your origin server, nothing moves

Step 1: Create Cloudflare Account

1. Go to https://dash.cloudflare.com/sign-up
2. Create account with your email

Step 2: Add Your Domain

1. Click “Add a site”
2. Enter sempers.com
3. Select the Free plan
4. Cloudflare will scan your existing DNS records — review them and confirm they match what you have at your registrar/SiteGround
5. Important: Make sure all records are correct before proceeding. You should see A/CNAME records pointing to SiteGround’s IP.

Step 3: Change Nameservers

Cloudflare will give you two nameservers (something like ada.ns.cloudflare.com and bob.ns.cloudflare.com).

1. Go to your domain registrar (wherever you bought sempers.com — this might be SiteGround, GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc.)
2. Find the Nameservers setting for sempers.com
3. Replace the current nameservers with the two Cloudflare gave you
4. Save

Note: DNS propagation takes 1-24 hours. Cloudflare will email you when it’s active.

Step 4: Configure SSL

Once Cloudflare is active:

1. Go to SSL/TLS in the left sidebar
2. Set encryption mode to Full (strict)
   • This means: browser → Cloudflare (HTTPS) → SiteGround (HTTPS)
   • SiteGround already has SSL, so Full (strict) is correct

Step 5: Add Wildcard Subdomain Redirect

This is the main fix. In Cloudflare:

1. Go to Rules → Redirect Rules
2. Click Create Rule
3. Configure:
   • Rule name: Wildcard subdomain redirect
   • When incoming requests match:
     • Field: Hostname
     • Operator: does not equal
     • Value: sempers.com
   • Click And to add another condition:
     • Field: Hostname
     • Operator: does not equal
     • Value: qa.sempers.com
   • Click And to add another condition:
     • Field: Hostname
     • Operator: does not equal
     • Value: eng.sempers.com
   • Then:
     • Type: Dynamic
     • Expression: concat("https://sempers.com", http.request.uri.path)
     • Status code: 301
4. Click Deploy

This single rule catches www, ftp, aaa, ww, and any other subdomain and 301 redirects to sempers.com with the same path.

Step 6: Verify

After DNS propagation (check at https://dnschecker.org):

# Should 301 redirect to sempers.com/blog/blog.html
curl -I https://www.sempers.com/blog/blog.html

# Should 301 redirect to sempers.com
curl -I https://aaa.sempers.com/

# Should 301 redirect to sempers.com
curl -I https://xyz123.sempers.com/

# Should serve content normally (200 OK)
curl -I https://sempers.com/

# Should serve content normally (200 OK)
curl -I https://qa.sempers.com/
curl -I https://eng.sempers.com/

What This Does NOT Change

• Your site files stay on SiteGround
• Your GitHub Actions deployment still works the same way
• QA and ENG environments are unaffected
• All your existing .htaccess rules still work
• SiteGround still handles PHP, email, etc.

What This DOES Change

• DNS is managed through Cloudflare instead of your registrar
• All traffic passes through Cloudflare first (adds CDN/caching)
• Wildcard subdomain requests are redirected before reaching SiteGround
• You get Cloudflare’s free DDoS protection and analytics

Optional: Disable SiteGround NGINX Direct Delivery

After Cloudflare is active, you could turn off SiteGround’s NGINX Direct Delivery since Cloudflare handles caching. This would make your .htaccess rules work directly (Apache processes all requests). Not required, but simplifies the stack.

Rollback

If anything goes wrong, change nameservers back to SiteGround’s originals at your registrar. Everything reverts within 1-24 hours.

Created: February 9, 2026