Get a Free SSL Certificate for Website. Google has been operating assiduously to make the network safer and has now begun to mark websites as Non-Secure which do not have an SSL certificate installed but yet exchange user data. Now it has a must to assist your website over HTTPS/SSL to secure your web users’ data and also to determine that your domain cares about security. Starting a new blog with Paid SSL certificate is expensive.
To hold costs down, I’ll recommend you should get a free SSL for your blog during your first plan. Then, You can replace it with a paid one at any time. In my last post, we discussed how to Add Keywords and Meta Descriptions in WordPress.
In this post, you’ll learn how to get a paid/free SSL certificate for your website through Cloudflare or your Hosting company.
What Is an SSL Certificate?
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It is an internet protocol for guarding data shift between a visitor’s browser and the website they are visiting. This fully secures the encryption process.
Every internet user carries information when he visits websites. This information can usually be sensitive like payment details, debit card information, or login credentials. Using the usual HTTP protocol means this information can be captured by hackers. This is where SSL or HTTPS comes in to secure our websites.
Every website needs an SSL certificate declared by one of the identified certificate issuing authorities. This certificate is verified and highlighted in the user’s browser address bar with a lock sign and HTTPS instead of HTTP.
Why Do We Need an SSL Certificate?
Security certificate makes websites more trustable in the eyes of users coming to your blog.
If a website doesn’t have an SSL certificate connected, Google will flag it as unsafe to visitors, and Google’s ranking of a site can drastically drop with no assurance from users. Therefore, if you don’t have an SSL certificate, you might not rank as high as you could. If you run an E-Commerce store, companies like Paypal and Stripe will require you to secure a connection using SSL before receiving any payments through your website. Without SSL, you can’t even run a business store.
How Does SSL Certificate Work?
Now that we have described what is SSL and why is it important for every website, you might be staring how does an SSL certificate actually work?
SSL defends information by encrypting the data transfer between a visitor’s browser and the website. When a user visits an SSL/HTTPS website, their browser initially checks if the website’s SSL certificate is valid. If everything checks out, then the browser uses the website’s public key to encrypt the information. Then this information is sent back to the proposed server (website) where it is decrypted using the public key and a secret private key.
How Much Do SSL Certificates Cost?
The value of SSL Certificates varies from one certificate authority to another. Their pricing could be between $70-350 / year. Some providers offer add-on services with their certificates which may also affect the cost of your SSL certificate.
If you are going to buy an SSL certificate, then we recommend using Comodo SSL. They are one of the largest security service providers in the world, and they offer the best deal on SSL certificates.
But before you go to buy, you should test to see if you can get the SSL certificate for free.
Installing Free SSL Certificate from Cloudflare
The most simple way to get a free SSL certificate is to sign up for Cloudflare.
- Create an account on Cloudflare
First, go to Cloudflare and Signup for an Account.
- Configure your website/domain
- Configure your Website DNS Records
- Select a CloudFlare Free Plan
- Update your NameServers
- Set up Free SSL for your website
- Redirect traffic to HTTPS
The configuration will take a few moments to go through. Once done, you can then open any page on your website, and it will open on HTTPS.
Another way to Install Free SSL Certificate WordPress.
Once you have allowed your free SSL Certificate, you will require to set up WordPress to start using HTTPS instead of HTTP in all your URLs. The simplest way to do this is by installing and activating the Really Simple SSL plugin on your website.
Upon activation, the plugin will check to see if your SSL certificate is authorized. After that, it will turn on HTTP to HTTPS redirect and change your website settings to start using SSL/HTTPS.
Really Simple SSL Plugin performs it super light to set up free SSL certificate in WordPress. That’s why we recommend it for all beginners. However, it gets insecure URLs when the page loads, which rises your page load time a little bit. This is why excellent users who are concerned about WordPress speed use the manual process to set up their free SSL certificate.