r/CloudFlare: CloudFlare sites and domains

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This article archives a conversation, which took place in a subreddit post (original source linked below) and to which I contributed a solution or answer (with the u/MasterofSynapse handle), in a Q&A format.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/CloudFlare/comments/y2w4j5/cloudflafe_sites_and_domains_can_someone_explain/

Question

So, first of all - I am not very skilled when it comes to domains and their records, but I'm trying to learn :)

I have a TLD that is not supported by CloudFlare - you can only register it in specific countries. I changed the nameservers of that domain to CFs and created a site within CloudFlare dashboard.

I'm not sure actually how the traffic works in this case and what is the CF role in this situation:

the site itself is still hosted on my hosting
I'm guessing that domain records still have IP addresses of the hosting - because when I enter the domain name into my browser - I get to the site
CloudFlare cannot be the registrar for the domain, so the domain is still registered with the hosting company as the registrar
What are the benefits of CF here - if they are even applied?

Answer

A Nameserver, which CF is now in your case, is responsible for translating e.g. reddit.com to 100.100.100.100, so names to numbers. If you don't use the orange cloud on your DNS records within your zone, CF will do nothing else, just translates the names to numbers. If you are using the orange cloud, you benefit from CFs CDN, DDoS and bot protection, and the Auto-Minify of your sites traffic to increase speed. Have a look around your CF zone to get a feel for the features CF offers.

On the topic of the DNS records still being there, do you see any in your zone under DNS? It may be that the world is still asking the previous nameservers since the change of those takes time (up to 48 hours). If you don't see any in there then your site will not work anymore after a while.