How Shopify pre-rendering works
Shopify serves your store from its own edge, so you cannot point your domain anywhere else without breaking checkout. Instead, your domain stays on Cloudflare pointing at Shopify, and a Worker route intercepts crawler requests before they reach the store.
Crawler GET requests for HTML receive the rendered snapshot from Encited. Browser visits, assets, and any failed render calls continue through Cloudflare to Shopify unchanged.
Prerequisites
- An Encited account and API key (Settings → API Keys).
- Your store's custom domain with DNS managed in a Cloudflare account.
- The domain connected to Shopify as usual (A record on the apex, CNAME on www).
Set up pre-rendering for Shopify
Your DNS stays exactly as Shopify configured it: an A record on the apex pointing at Shopify and a CNAME on www pointing at shops.myshopify.com. The Worker route sits in front of them, so keep your custom domain set as the primary domain in Shopify admin.
Create a new Worker
Open Cloudflare dashboard → choose a "Hello World" Worker → Deploy → Edit Code
Paste the snippet below into the Worker editor
// encited.js (Cloudflare Worker)export default {async fetch(req, env) {// Only handle public GET navigationsif (req.method !== 'GET') return fetch(req);// Treat missing/empty Accept and bare '*/*' as HTML so crawler tests// (curl without -H, default fetch) still route through prerender.// Asset requests from browsers send specific Accept (e.g. 'text/css,*/*;q=0.1')// so they won't match.const accept = (req.headers.get('accept') || '').trim();const isHtmlRequest = !accept || accept === '*/*' || accept.includes('text/html');if (!isHtmlRequest) return fetch(req);const headers = new Headers();headers.set('x-lovablehtml-api-key', env.LOVABLEHTML_API_KEY);headers.set('accept', 'text/html');const forward = ['accept-language','sec-fetch-mode','sec-fetch-site','sec-fetch-dest','sec-fetch-user','upgrade-insecure-requests','referer','user-agent',];for (const name of forward) {const v = req.headers.get(name);if (v) headers.set(name, v);}try {const r = await fetch('https://encited.com/api/prerender/render?url=' + encodeURIComponent(req.url),{ headers, redirect: 'manual' },);// 301 = configured redirect rule matched - forward to clientif (r.status === 301) {const loc = r.headers.get('location');if (loc) {return new Response(null, {status: 301,headers: { location: loc, 'cache-control': 'no-store' },});}}// 304 = not pre-rendered, pass through to originif (r.status === 304) {return fetch(req);}if (r.status === 200 && (r.headers.get('content-type') || '').includes('text/html')) {const responseHeaders = new Headers(r.headers);for (const name of ['content-encoding', 'content-length', 'transfer-encoding', 'connection', 'keep-alive']) {responseHeaders.delete(name);}responseHeaders.set('content-type', 'text/html; charset=utf-8');return new Response(r.body, { status: 200, headers: responseHeaders });}} catch {// Prerender unreachable → fall through so visitors still get the site}return fetch(req);},};
Add the API key secret
Under Variables and Secrets, add a secret named LOVABLEHTML_API_KEY or run: wrangler secret put LOVABLEHTML_API_KEY
Confirm your DNS record is proxied
Routes need your domain's DNS to be managed in the same Cloudflare account. In DNS → Records, the A or CNAME record for yourdomain.com must show an orange cloud (Proxied), not gray (DNS only). The Worker only runs on traffic that passes through Cloudflare's proxy.
Add a route to your Worker
Go to your Worker → Settings → Domains & Routes → Add Route → enter yourdomain.com/*. If your site is reachable on both yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com, enter *yourdomain.com/* instead so both are covered.
Set Failure mode
Set to Fail open (proceed) and save. If the Worker ever errors, requests continue straight to your origin instead of failing.
Let crawlers through Cloudflare's bot settings
If you use Bot Fight Mode or AI crawler blocking (Security → Bots), allow the crawlers you want pre-rendered. Those protections run before your Worker, so a blocked crawler never reaches it.
Deploy the Worker
It can take a couple of minutes to start working.
Test the integration
1. Send a crawler request
curl -sS -D - -o /dev/null \
-A "Googlebot" \
-H "Accept: text/html" \
"https://your-domain.com/"Look for a successful HTML response and the x-lovablehtml-render-cache header.
2. Confirm browser passthrough
curl -sS -D - -o /dev/null \
-A "Mozilla/5.0" \
-H "Accept: text/html" \
-H "Accept-Language: en-US" \
-H "Sec-Fetch-Mode: navigate" \
-H "Sec-Fetch-Dest: document" \
-H "Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1" \
"https://your-domain.com/"This request should come back from Shopify without an Encited render-cache header.
Common errors
The Worker never runs on store traffic
The DNS records for your store must be Proxied (orange cloud) in Cloudflare. Worker routes only run on traffic that passes through Cloudflare's proxy.
Your domain redirects to the myshopify.com address
In Shopify admin open Settings → Domains and make sure your custom domain is set as the primary domain. Shopify redirects non-primary domains to the primary one.
Crawlers are blocked before they reach the Worker
Bot Fight Mode and AI crawler blocking (Security → Bots) run before Worker routes. Allow the crawlers you want pre-rendered.
Crawler requests return errors instead of rendered HTML
Confirm the Worker has a secret named LOVABLEHTML_API_KEY with a valid API key from your Encited dashboard, then redeploy the Worker.
Request and security behavior
- Only crawler GET requests for public HTML pages are answered with pre-rendered snapshots.
- Along with the public page URL, only the API key and crawler-classification headers are sent to Encited.
- Cookie and Authorization headers are never forwarded to Encited.
- If Encited is unavailable or does not return rendered HTML, the request continues to Shopify unchanged.
Common questions
Does this touch checkout or the Shopify admin?
No. Only crawler requests for HTML pages are answered with pre-rendered snapshots. Checkout, admin, apps, and all browser traffic continue to Shopify unchanged.
Why can't I use the no-code DNS setup with Shopify?
Shopify routes stores by hostname on its own edge and permanently redirects unknown setups to the myshopify.com address, which creates a loop. Keeping DNS on Cloudflare with a Worker route avoids that entirely.
Do I need to change my Shopify DNS records?
No. Keep the records Shopify asks for (A on the apex, CNAME www to shops.myshopify.com). The only change is switching them to Proxied in Cloudflare and attaching the Worker route.
