A brand-new hosting account has no site on it yet: no files, no domain pointed at it, no SSL certificate issued. Getting from that empty state to a live site is three steps: point your domain at your hosting (nameservers or a single A record), put your site's files on the server (WordPress install or upload via File Manager), and let SSL issue automatically once DNS resolves. Most of this takes minutes; the part that can't be rushed is DNS propagation.
Step 1: point your domain at your hosting
Your domain has to know where your hosting lives before anything else works. There are two ways to do this, and which one applies depends on where your domain is registered.
Domain registered with Flashcloud
If you bought your domain through us, it's already pointed at our nameservers by default. Nothing to do here.
Domain registered elsewhere
You have two options:
- Change nameservers (recommended for most people): at your registrar, point the domain's nameservers at ours. In the portal this is under
Domains→ your domain →DNS, which edits nameservers only, up to 5. This hands us full control of the DNS zone, which matters if you also want email, subdomains, or DNS records managed in one place. - Add an A record instead: if you want to keep DNS management at your current registrar (common if you have email or other services already configured elsewhere), leave nameservers alone and instead create an A record for your domain pointing at your hosting account's IP address. This is a narrower change: it moves only the web traffic, not the whole zone.
Nameserver changes and new DNS records both have to propagate across the internet's resolvers, which can take anywhere from a few minutes to 24-48 hours depending on your previous DNS provider's TTL settings. You can start step 2 while you wait; there's no need for DNS to finish first.
Once your domain's nameservers point to us, ongoing record-level changes (MX, TXT, CNAME, additional A records) happen in Services → your hosting → DNS Zone Editor, not on the Domains page. That distinction trips people up: Domains → your domain → DNS is nameservers only.
Step 2: get your site onto the server
Two common starting points, depending on what you're building.
Installing WordPress
From your service page, open the WordPress tile and run the installer. Point it at your domain (or a subdomain, if you're testing before going live), set an admin username and password, and it handles the database and file setup for you. On Flashcloud, WordPress installs come with the LiteSpeed Cache plugin pre-configured and Redis object cache already wired in, so you're not starting from a bare install with no caching.
Uploading your own files
If you already have a built site (static HTML, an existing WordPress export, a framework build), skip the installer and use the File Manager tile instead. Upload your files into the document root for your domain, or connect over FTP if you'd rather use a desktop client (set that up under the FTP Accounts tile). If your site needs a database, create one first under MySQL Databases and update your site's config with the credentials.
Running more than one site on the same hosting account? You don't need a second hosting plan for that. A completely separate domain goes through Addon Domains; a second spelling of the same brand that should show identical content goes through Domain Aliases; a subsection like blog.yourdomain.com goes through Subdomains. See Addon domains, aliases, and subdomains for which one fits.
Step 3: SSL and going live
Once your domain's DNS resolves to your hosting, we auto-issue a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate, typically within about 5 minutes. You don't request this manually. It also auto-renews, so there's no follow-up needed.
Until DNS finishes propagating, your domain won't reliably reach the new hosting yet, and a certificate can't be issued for a domain that isn't pointing here. If you visit your domain right after making DNS changes and get an old site, a browser SSL warning, or nothing at all, that's almost always propagation still in progress, not a problem with your setup. Give it time before troubleshooting further.
Your site is already fast at this point without extra configuration: we run LiteSpeed Web Server with LSCache on all shared and WordPress plans, and Cloudflare handles DNS with anycast lookups close to each visitor. For hosted domains, Cloudflare's proxy and edge caching are switched on by default, so DDoS protection and cached static assets are working from day one. The per-domain toggles and settings live on the Cloudflare CDN page in the portal. See Setting up a CDN with Cloudflare for what each control does.
Once you're live
With the site up, it's worth putting a backup habit in place early rather than after something breaks. Server-level daily backups already run automatically, and WordPress sites get their own per-site backup tab in the portal on top of that. See Backing up your WordPress site for how the layers fit together and when to add a plugin-level backup as well.
If something won't go live
If DNS has had a full day or two to propagate and your domain still isn't resolving to your hosting, or SSL hasn't issued after DNS clearly points here, open a ticket from Support → New ticket in the portal. It's a real person, not a bot, and they can check your DNS zone and certificate status directly rather than you guessing from the outside. Live chat works too for a quicker back-and-forth.