Cloudflare Pages quickstart: 5-minute local dev environment
The shortest path to getting Cloudflare Pages running — a minimal starting point for first-time users.
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Quick answer
How do I pin Cloudflare Pages and Workers runtime versions?
Use compatibility_date in wrangler.toml to lock the runtime behavior. Validate any bump on a Preview branch first so breaking changes never reach production.
Machine-readable page data: /data/cloudflare-quickstart.json
In-depth analysis
Cloudflare Pages watches your Git branch, builds on every commit, and atomically publishes the result to the global edge — zero-ops static hosting. The fastest path to a win is one command to scaffold, start dev, edit a line, and see hot reload.
# public/_headers — security headers ride with static assets (Cloudflare convention)
/*
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains
X-Frame-Options: DENY
Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-originCloudflare Pages Quickstart · Key takeaways
- Node ≥ 20.19 and pnpm ready
- Official scaffold initialized
- Dev hot reload works
- First local page reached
FAQ & pitfalls
Why are _headers and _redirects not taking effect?
Both files must live in the output root (e.g. dist/). Placing them under src/ means they never ship. Pure static projects should not force a _worker.js either, or you lose the zero-cold-start advantage.
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What readers are asking
Questions that keep coming back in reader feedback, already answered.
- 01
Why are _headers / _redirects not taking effect?
Both files must sit at the root of the output directory (dist/); anything under src/ is never uploaded. A purely static project should not add _worker.js either — that gives up the zero-cold-start advantage.
See the full guide → - 02
How do I invalidate the Cloudflare edge cache precisely?
Give static assets a long immutable max-age and serve HTML with must-revalidate. Changing a filename changes the URL, so Cloudflare fetches the new version automatically.
See the full guide → - 03
Why is my Astro component's interactivity not working?
Components ship as zero-JS HTML by default, so an interactive one needs a client:* directive (client:load, client:visible, …). Without it the script is never bundled into the page.
See the full guide →