Accelerating Workers & Pages Projects with Preferred Domains

May 24, 2025

Accelerating Workers & Pages Projects with Preferred Domains

While there are many tutorials online about setting up preferred domains for websites using Cloudflare CDN, there are few specifically addressing Workers and Pages projects. This leaves many beginners only able to use Cloudflare’s assigned IPs for CDN acceleration. This tutorial will teach you how to set up preferred domains for Workers and Pages projects to make your projects run faster.

Prerequisites

First, you need to determine which preferred domain you will use. You can use your own preferred domain or one maintained by the community.

The preferred domain used in this tutorial is visa.cn
You need a domain that has been transferred to Cloudflare (free domains with two-way resolution cannot be used), example: 0163.eu.org

Using Preferred Domains for Workers Projects

The custom domain example used in this tutorial for the Worker is todo.0163.eu.org.

Add CNAME Resolution Record

Add a CNAME-type resolution record for your domain todo.0163.eu.org:
- Name: Enter your desired custom domain, such as todo;
- Target: Enter your preferred domain, such as visa.cn;
If your Workers project is already using this custom domain (e.g., todo.0163.eu.org), please delete it first.

⚠️ Do not enable the orange cloud (Cloudflare’s proxy feature)!
Add Route for Workers Project

Go to Workers Routes in the left menu bar, click Add Route:
- Route: Enter your final custom domain in this format:
  todo.0163.eu.org/*
- Worker: Select the corresponding project name, click Save.
The custom domain must end with /*, for example: todo.0163.eu.org/*

Before and After Comparison for Workers Project

Before Optimization
After Optimization

Using Preferred Domains for Pages Projects

The custom domain example used in this tutorial for Pages is drive.0163.eu.org.

Add Custom Domain to Pages Project First, add a custom domain to your Pages project, note down the CNAME target domain drive-ba3.pages.dev, and wait for the custom domain to take effect.
Use Huawei Cloud International - DNS Service

The international version doesn’t require real-name verification. If you’re frequently redirected to the domestic version during registration, please enable global proxy mode to register.

Set security phone (can be skipped)

Activate Huawei Cloud

Being redirected to the “Complete Information” page means registration is complete, you can ignore the binding prompts.
Add Custom Domain to DNS Service

Click to go to DNS Service, then click Public Domain

Click Create Public Domain in the top right corner

Enter the Pages custom domain drive.0163.eu.org that needs optimization, then click OK

Click Manage Resolution for drive.0163.eu.org

After entering Manage Resolution, click Add Record Set in the top left corner

Add a new CNAME Record
- Record Type: CNAME - Point domain to another domain
- Host Record: Leave empty
- Line Type: Default
- Record Value: Pages project assigned domain drive-ba3.pages.dev
Add another CNAME Record
- Record Type: CNAME - Point domain to another domain
- Host Record: Leave empty
- Line Type: Geographic Resolution > Mainland China
- Record Value: Preferred domain visa.cn
Hover over the first NS record and copy all four NS record values to save.
```
1
ns1.huaweicloud-dns.com.
2
ns1.huaweicloud-dns.cn.
3
ns1.huaweicloud-dns.net.
4
ns1.huaweicloud-dns.org.
```
Set Custom Domain NS Records to Huawei Cloud NS Records

Add four Huawei Cloud NS type resolution records for your domain drive.0163.eu.org to take effect.

Note: Make sure to copy the . at the end of the NS records