How to setup a custom domain with SSL and Medium.com with CloudFlare

This short tutorial will show you how to setup a custom domain with SSL and Medium.com with CloudFlare.

To start, you of course must own the domain, let’s call it example.com.

Suppose you want your Medium blog to have the address blog.example.com, to differentiate it between your main site.

If you have your DNS configured to point to CloudFlare (highly recommended so traffic doesn’t always hit your server directly), then it’s a little trickier than Medium.com’s default instructions, which are posted here:

https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/213474588-How-do-I-set-up-a-custom-domain-

As stated in the article, the first step is to fill out a form, and someone from the support team will get back to you with configuration details.

When you get a response, login to your CloudFlare account and click the DNS tab:

step1

There are 2 types of records you have to add, CNAME and A Records.

We will start with CNAME.

You will get a name-value pair that looks like:

<token>.blog.example.com

And

<token2>.comodoca.com

The email will tell you that you can enter the name as <token>.blog.example.com OR just <token>.blog. I have found the latter to work.

You will enter the CNAME record as follows:

step2

Finally, you will receive a list of A Records to add. These should be added under the “Value” column. The “Name” column should just be “blog”.

step3

And that’s it! Easy peasy.