How To Install A Free SSL Security Certificate On Your WordPress Website
It has never been more crucial for you to have an SSL certificate on your website. I have made several videos on the topic to further convince people.
Here is a list of web hosting providers that include free SSL certificates for all websites when using their service.
Not everyone is going to use one of these web hosts, so here is a tutorial on how to add a free SSL certificate to any website regardless of which web host you are using.
Cloudflare’s flexible worked perfectly with Shared hosting
I faced Issues integrating Cloudflare’s SSL with DigitalOcean Droplet, faced similar Issues with Digital Ocean ?
hey adam sslforfree.com also lets you get a free ssl certificate. but the certificate is vlid for 90 days. You can make a post on that for people who dont wanna change their dns and move to cloudflare.
Thanks for sharing. I do think people are best off just using a webhost that offers free ssl.
Generally speaking Adam is right. However some companies are running their own (Windows) servers and changing/managing SSL every 90 days often isn’t making sense, as the time for work is more expensive than the price for a 2 year ssl … We’ve also seen quite a few people who had issues when auto-renewal failed. In terms of risk management, the less often you need to renew, the less problems you will face.
Hi Adam,
Thanks so much for this video!! Great info. I currently have an SSL certificate on my site from AccuwebHosting and it was set to renew 4/9/19 so I cancelled the renewal and then installed the SSL certificate as you described with cloudflare.
I already had the plugin: SSL Insecure Content Fixer. Do I still need to install the Really Simple SSL plugin? Or, am I good to go with the plugin that i have?
I did contact my host provider to tell them that I had installed the free SSL certificate from CloudFlare.
Anything I need to consider regarding switching from a paid SSL to a the free one?
Appreciate all your advice!!
Thanks,
Pam
That sounds great Pam. The plugin you have should be all you need. I have not used it before though. You may need to change the site URL to https in the settings. You will see it Settings > General
Hey Adam,
Great video! So i’m running WordPress with Godaddy… I followed the video and it worked within an hour on one of my sites, but im in the 24th hour of my main site, that i really need the SSL cert on, and still, “Not Secure”… any ideas?
Thanks,
Mike
It can take 24 – 48 hours.
Hey Adam,
I am Ashish Kumar. Yesterday, I came across your youtube video about Free SSL from Cloudfare. I implemented all the steps you mentioned in the video. Fortunately, I got free SSL in 6 hours. However, I am having issue while logging in my WordPress admin panel. Actually, It doesn’t allow me log in and sometime it redirects back to the same admin panel. What can i do to fix this issue ?
Also, I want to know. How much time it takes google to update my URLs?
Even though you got the SSL certificate in six hours you still need to wait 24 to 48 hours for the changes that you made to your DNS servers to propagate across the Internet.
Hey, I have watched your video last night and i actually did all that the video has said And now, everytime i check/ go to my website studentsnotebook.ml it says “server ip address could not be found “. Pls. Help me! Thanks
I’m trying to add the SSL certificate has shown. When added, all my site is fine, except one page that can’t load. My programmer says it’s because it is a query from another site that has HTTPS and it interferes with MY certificate. If this is so, how can I fix it ? (My programmer says it can’t be done, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only website owner with that issue. Surely there is a solution!) What is your take on it, and maybe to a video to help others 🙂 Thank you
Yes if you have anything embedded in your website that is not loading via https, then that page can’t load over https.
Hello! I would like to get cloudfare ssl for my personal website but I do not know if that is possible. I have a GoDaddy WordPress hosting.
Yes it’s totally possible. Just follow along in the video.
Hello thanks for the video, wanted to ask you signing up and getting free ssl from cloudflare will it affect your host with ur hosting company?? Will you have any issues with your hosting company
No not at all.
Do you recommend any special setup to get Cloudflare to work on an addon domain? On my primary domain it works like a charm, but the addon domain breaks/won’t even load as soon as the Cloudfare nameservers get changed. My Let’s Encrypt cert. expires in 3 days and I’d love to switch to Cloudflare per your recommendations.
If you setup Cloudflare and then later add a subdomain, you will have to manually add an A record in Cloudflare for this subdomain. I know it sounds a bit technical, but it is really easy.
Big question: use the inmotion free SSL or the cloudflare service?
I personally will use Cloudflare because the Cloudflare service has many other benefits.
Very well said, and easy to understand how to add SSL Certificate.
Thanks.
Thanks for showing us how to get a free SSL cert. CloudFlare worked perfectly. But for those adding the Really Simple SSL plugin to a live site, I would recommend waiting for the certificate to be issued from CloudFlare before activating the Really Simple SSL plugin. Otherwise, the plugin will try to search for the secured version, and you’ll get a default InMotion Hosting page. At least that’s what happened to me. Once the certificate was issued though, I regained access to my blog, and all is well again. =)
Adam, I assume I can use CloudFlare on non-Wordpress sites too. So without the Really Simple SSL plugin, will users just see both http: & https: pages, depending on what they type in their browser? Do you foresee any possible issues using CloudFlare on non-Wordpress sites?
Thanks again Adam for the awesome video. =)
Yes, you can easily use it on non-WordPress websites. In fact, I do!
And yes you are correct, I would STRONGLY recommend waiting 2 – 3 days.
Hi Adam, The free SSL from CloudFlare apparently does not allow anyone who is using an older operating system (like XP) view a site at all. The “ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH” shows up in Chrome browser. Most people I know of refuse to “upgrade” to the newer Windows “garbage” (in my opinion) and some are ditching Chrome rather than their XP’s. Most, however, probably have no idea what to do – and this is a potential huge loss of traffic. I think that there are probably a very large number of users on older systems and I don’t want my site to be unavailable to them. I’ve been searching for a “workaround” for hours and coming up empty. Do you know of any way to make a site “visible” to those using older systems? I found some custom code to put in php to make older versions ignore the SSL…but either the code isn’t good, doesn’t work or I’m doing it all wrong. Can you help? Thank you so much.
I wonder if that is a cloud flare issue or SSL certs in general. Although XP is a very old operating system, what 16 years ago.