Guide to change DNS servers from NameBright to CloudFlare

  1. Description
  2. Check your DNS records on NameBright
  3. Create Cloudflare account and add your DNS records
  4. Change DNS servers on NameBright to point to Cloudflare
  5. Check if your domain is already using Cloudflare's DNS Servers

1.- Description

NameBright provides two default DNS servers for the domains registered with them:

ns1.namebrightdns.com 
ns2.namebrightdns.com

The problem is that these DNS servers are not configured correctly and can't provide a valid answer when querying for CAA records, take a look to this post for more info.

Due this issue, domains using these DNS servers are not able to issue certificates provided by Let's Encrypt just because for Let's Encrypt, the CAA record check is mandatory. Indeed it is going to be a big problem after 8th September because this CAA record check will be mandatory not only for Let's Encrypt but for all Certificate Authorities.

Several persons have tried to get in contact to NameBright to solve this issue but no response from them so far.

We hope NameBright will fix this issue in their DNS servers but in the meanwhile we can solve it by ourselves changing the DNS servers provided by NameBright to another DNS provider, in this case, we will show how to move them to Cloudflare. Their DNS servers are free and reliable so let's go.

2.- Check your DNS records on NameBright

Before changing the DNS servers, we need to take care of the current DNS host records defined for our domain.

2.1.- Logon to your account on NameBright

By default, if you only have 1 domain registered with NameBright you will access directly to this screen.

If you have several domains, access to your domain clicking on My Account -> Domains -> click on the desired domain

2.2.- Note your current host records down

Now, we need to note the defined records for our domain down because we will need to add them on Cloudflare.

The records shown on the screenshot are only examples, you will have different ones, maybe other CNAMEs or none, other MX, TXT, A, etc.

Once noted them dowm, we are going to create a new account on Cloudflare.

3.- Create Cloudflare account and add your DNS records

Go to Cloudflare site https://www.cloudflare.com/ and click on Sign Up button.

Use a valid email address as username and a password to access Cloudflare, also, check Cloudflares's terms and conditions and once done click on Create Account button.

Now we will see a form asking for the domain name we want to add to Cloudflare so we will write down our domain name and will click on Scan DNS Records

Now we need to wait less than 1 minute while Cloudflare tries to get our current host records.

Once finished click on Continue button.

If Cloudflare was able to get our current records we will see them here but in my case it was not able to retrieve my current records so now we need to add all the records one by one manually (that is the reason we noted down our host records previously).

In the case that Cloudflare get your host records, you need to double check that all your records are correct and in case there were missing records add them now.

So, one by one, first we select the record type (in the example is an A record), the host name (in the example is the domain changedns.net), the IP of our host, deactivate Cloudflare Proxy function (when clicking on this icon we will see a gray icon showing that we deactivated it) and click on Add Record button.

As I said, once added all records you need to double check that all cloud icons are gray and now we can click on Continue button.

Now select the Free Website Plan and click on Continue

In the next screen we will see the Name Servers asigned by Cloudflare for our domain, in my case the new Name Servers are jo.ns.cloudflare.com and peyton.ns.cloudflare.com (yours could differ from these ones) so we note down the new name servers and click Continue.

In the next screen we are notified about our website is deactivated yet because the DNS change has not been performed on our registrar (Namebright) so we will do it right now ;).

4.- Change DNS servers on NameBright to point to Cloudflare

Now we need to go again to NameBright web site and logon to our account. Once logged we will select our domain and will click on NameServers section.

We will view our current name servers (ns1.namebrightdns.com and ns2.namebrightdns.com).

So now we will replace these name servers with the ones provided by Cloudflare and will click on Save button.

If we come back to Overview Section we will see this...

...or after refreshing the page this...

So now we need to wait till our new name servers are uploaded to the top level domain and it cold take a few minutes or a couple of days. Usually, Top Levels Domains like .com, .net, .org are updated within minutes but other regional top level domains like .es, .de, .co.uk could take a few hours (24/48) to be updated.

5. Check if your domain is already using Cloudflare's DNS Servers

We can logon in Cloudflare again and if we view this notice is because the name servers are not uploaded to top level domain yet and we need to wait a bit more, we can press the button Recheck Nameservers but Cloudflare will recheck it for us so be patient ;).

And once all is ready, instead of the above notice we will see that our domain is active already.

Just one more thing, if you need to add, delete or modify some of your host records, just logon to Cloudflare, click on DNS section and there you will be able to perform the needed changes.

That's all folks ;)

Cheers,
sahsanu