Most of the "my site is down" messages I get from clients trace back to DNS or SSL, not application code. Here's the checklist I run through on every new domain:
- Point the domain's nameservers to Cloudflare before touching anything else — it gives you one dashboard for DNS, caching, and security.
- Set SSL/TLS mode to "Full (strict)" once the origin server has a valid certificate, never "Flexible" long-term — it creates a security gap between Cloudflare and your server.
- Enable "Always Use HTTPS" and HSTS once you've confirmed every page actually loads over HTTPS.
- For DDNS on a home server or self-hosted project, a small script updating an A record via the Cloudflare API beats most third-party DDNS services — fewer moving parts, one less account to manage.
None of this is exotic. It's just the stuff that's easy to skip under deadline pressure and expensive to debug after a client calls asking why their site shows a certificate warning.