Because the website’s server is located in China, overseas visitors experience extremely slow loading. By splitting DNS resolution for domestic and foreign users—domestic traffic stays on local lines while foreign traffic goes through Cloudflare—you can significantly speed up access for users abroad.

What you need to prepare

A Cloudflare account, a PayPal account linked to a bank card (used to activate the free Cloudflare for SaaS, so a zero-balance card is fine), and a little time.

Register a relay domain

First, head to EU.org to register a free second-level domain.

Ignore the ultra-minimalist design, click “Sign-in or sign-up here!” → “Register” to create an account. You’ll need to fill in: Name, E-mail, Address (line 1), Address (line 2), Country, Password, Confirm Password. After filling them out, tick the box confirming you’ve read and accepted the domain policy to finish registration.

Important

Note: the Name field seems to require a space and no numbers; entering Vinking throws “Enter a valid value.”, while Vinking loma passes. Address lines 1 & 2 can be random but can’t be left blank.

You’ll receive a verification email:

Click the nic.eu.org/arf/XXX link to verify. After that, copy the XXX-FREE part after nic-hdl in the email and paste it into the Handle field on the login page; the password is the one you just set.

After logging in, click “New Domain”. First enter the Complete domain name (the domain you want; click “list” below to see available suffixes). We’ll apply for the free domain vinkingtest.eu.org as an example for the steps below.

Next, go to Cloudflare to add the site (the domain registration isn’t finished yet, so don’t close that tab).

Click “Add site” → enter the domain you’re applying for (here vinkingtest.eu.org) → choose the Free plan → skip adding DNS records. You’ll finally get two Cloudflare nameservers: kenneth.ns.cloudflare.com and malavika.ns.cloudflare.com.

Go back to the domain application page and enter those two into Name1 and Name2 at the bottom. Click Submit; if you see “No error, applying changes... Done” the registration is complete. In Cloudflare, click “Done, check nameservers” to finish onboarding.

Wait

EU.org takes a while to process registration—anywhere from ten minutes to a week. I personally waited about two or three hours before receiving the success email; Cloudflare also sends an activation notice. Then you can move on.

Create a subdomain record

In Cloudflare, open the free domain you just added, click DNS, and add a subdomain record that will act as the relay. Refer to the image below; here we use the name i:

SaaS onboarding

Next, in SSL/TLS → Custom Hostnames, enable Cloudflare for SaaS. You’ll need to link a PayPal card to subscribe. Cloudflare for SaaS gives 100 free custom hostnames—plenty for personal use. Beyond that, it’s $0.1 per hostname per month.

Note

To cancel, click your profile icon → Billing → Subscriptions → Cancel.

After SaaS is enabled, add a fallback origin. This is the subdomain you just created; here it’s i.vinkingtest.eu.org. Once added, the status should show “Valid”.

Click “Add Custom Hostname”. Enter your actual website name, e.g. vinking.top. If you don’t need to support legacy browsers like IE6, set the minimum TLS version to 1.1 or higher for better security. See the settings below:

After saving, you’ll get two records: Certificate Validation and Hostname Pre-validation. Add these two DNS records at your domain provider (Tencent Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, etc.).

Domain-provider setup

Once Cloudflare shows both certificate and hostname statuses as “Valid”, add one more CNAME record at your domain provider: set the source/line to “Overseas” and the record value to the fallback origin (i.vinkingtest.eu.org). Now your DNS will contain two CNAME records that route traffic differently based on the visitor’s location.

When you visit the site from a foreign IP and see the page below, resolution is working: