How to Add HTTPS (SSL) On Your Entire WordPress Website

Heather

 Broken Links

I recently wrote about the new changes by Google and the need for most websites to add SSL to their site. That article is the “why” this one is the “how.”

You’ll need to add an SSL certificate on your host your host as we outlined in my previous post. If you’ve done that, congrats! You might think you are done and go over to your site and you still see the little “i” for “not secure” icon in the address bar of your browser. Nothing can be more frustrating than thinking you have completed something, only to realize it is not quite done. What do you do now? What’s the final step? This short tutorial will show you how to finish up adding SSL to your site.

Adding

SSL

to your Website

If your website is hosted by Flywheel, then adding SSL is pretty quick and easy. First, login into your Flywheel account, then navigate to your website. Go to the tab Add-ons, then go to add SSL. This will bring up a form where you will add some basic information about your business such as the city and state your business is located and the business name. Once this is done, it will take you back to the website Overview page and you will see a green shield with a checkmark. That means that an SSL certificate has been generated for your site via the free Let’s Encrypt service.

Forcing SSL to your Flywheel-Hosted Website

Now we need to force SSL to your website. What this means is that your overall site is now secure, but not all your images and content is secure. By forcing SSL, we are securing your content too. Click on the tab Advanced, then scroll down the page and you will see Force SSL. Click the Toggle On and you have now force SSL to be sitewide.

Love how easy Flywheel is? Move your site to Flywheel today!

Forcing SSL for Websites Hosted Elsewhere

Don’t have Flywheel hosting? No problem, we got you covered. We suggest using the Really Simple SSL plugin to force SSL.

Once you have added a SSL certificate to your hosting, for your site, then navigate over to your website WP Dashboard. Go to Plugins > Add New. In the Search box enter Really Simple SSL. Once you find it, install and activate the plugin. After you’ve activated it, a notification will appear titles “Almost ready to migrate to SSL!” Down below check the checkbox and click the “Go ahead, activate SSL!” button. See a video demonstration here:

That’s it! You’re good to go.

Alternatively, if you use a security plugin (we really like iThemes Security), you might also have an option to force-SSL site-wide in your security plugin.

Want Some Help With SSL?

Here at wpXPRESS, we help people with their WordPress websites and complicated stuff like adding SSL and HTTPS security. We’d love to get SSL setup on your site. All you need to do is sign up for one of our membership plans, and we’ll handle all kinds of technical stuff on your website, for you.

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