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CoreSpeed Preview Routing and Production Cutover

Ryan Sullivan

CoreSpeed can preview a migrated website through its real domain before the public website is moved to the new origin.

Preview architecture

During preview:

  • Public traffic continues to the existing production origin.
  • An approved reviewer receives a CoreSpeed preview session.
  • Cloudflare identifies that session through a cookie.
  • Requests from that session are routed to the CoreSpeed origin.
  • Edge caching is disabled for the preview.
  • Other visitors remain on the existing website.

This allows the migrated site to be evaluated through the normal hostname without changing the public experience.

Required Cloudflare components

The preview configuration requires:

  • A DNS record inside the website’s Cloudflare zone that resolves to the CoreSpeed origin
  • A Worker route covering the public hostname
  • The CoreSpeed preview Worker
  • Proxying enabled
  • An in-zone hostname that can be used for origin resolution

Cloudflare’s origin override restrictions require the public hostname and override hostname to exist in the same zone.

What should be tested

The preview should be used to validate:

  • Page rendering
  • Navigation
  • Forms
  • Login behavior
  • Redirects
  • Cookies and sessions
  • API integrations
  • Search
  • Ecommerce workflows
  • Downloadable files
  • Canonical URLs
  • Third-party scripts
  • Origin-dependent functionality

Production cutover

After approval:

  1. SiteCare performs any required final content or database synchronization.
  2. The CoreSpeed origin is confirmed healthy.
  3. The preview Worker route is replaced by the CoreSpeed page-cache Worker.
  4. Public traffic begins flowing to the CoreSpeed origin.
  5. SiteCare validates the website and cache behavior.
  6. The preview-only configuration is removed or retained only where operationally appropriate.

The internal CoreSpeed workflow specifically changes the route from the preview Worker to the production page-cache Worker after launch.

When the domain is already active on Cloudflare, the production cutover is a routing or origin change rather than a new authoritative nameserver migration.

Related Cloudflare documentation

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