Hosting your site yourself

When a Site Care plan ends, hosting by Zendrex ends with it. We send you your site files, and this guide covers what to do with them. It is written for someone who has not done this before. If you would rather not, Zendrex can do the launch for you for $150 (reply to the email that sent you this link).

1. What you receive

A zip file of your finished site: the web pages, images, styles and fonts, ready to publish as they are. Keep a copy somewhere safe, such as your own cloud storage. Zendrex does not keep a copy for you once hosting has ended.

2. Host the files on Cloudflare Pages

Cloudflare Pages is the same kind of hosting your site was built for, and it has a free plan. These steps follow Cloudflare's own documentation: Direct Upload.

1. Create a free Cloudflare account and log in to the Cloudflare dashboard.
2. Go to Workers & Pages.
3. Choose Create application, then Get started, then Drag and drop your files.
4. Enter a project name.
5. Drag in your zip file (Cloudflare accepts a zip or a single folder of files), then choose Save and Deploy.

Cloudflare then gives you a temporary address ending in .pages.dev where you can check the site loads. Menu names can change over time. If a step does not match what you see, the linked Cloudflare page is the authority.

3. Point your domain at it

You own your domain and keep it at your registrar. Cloudflare's guide: Custom domains.

1. In Workers & Pages, open your project and choose Custom domains, then Set up a domain, and enter your domain.
2. For a main domain such as yourbusiness.com.au, Cloudflare requires the domain's nameservers to point to Cloudflare. Follow the prompts, then change the nameservers at your registrar as Cloudflare tells you.
3. For a subdomain such as www.yourbusiness.com.au with DNS kept elsewhere, add a CNAME record pointing to your .pages.dev address. Do this only after finishing step 1 in the dashboard, or the site can fail to load.

Changes at a registrar can take a few hours to take effect. Cloudflare's Pages guides do not specifically cover .com.au registrars, so ask your registrar if you are unsure where nameservers or DNS records are changed. Unverified by us: the exact screens at each registrar.

4. Your contact form

If your site has a contact form, it was set up to work on Cloudflare Pages as we delivered it. If you move the site somewhere else, the form may need to be set up again, at your cost (Terms, Clause 8). Check by sending yourself a test message after the site is live.

5. What you now look after

• SSL certificate: Cloudflare Pages issues and renews this for you on its own hosting. If you use a different host, check how it handles renewals.
• Backups: keep your zip file and any later changes somewhere safe. Zendrex no longer takes backups.
• Security updates and edits: changes to the site are now yours to make, or to ask a developer to make. Zendrex's flat $35 edit request applies only while you have a care plan, so ask us if you want a quote.
• Domain renewal: this stays with you and your registrar, as it always did.

6. Want us to do it?

Launch help is $150: we deploy the site into a hosting account you own and connect your domain. Reply to the email that sent you this link and we will set it up.