Imagine if a customer entered your website to make a purchase but was greeted with a security warning instead? Not having an SSL certificate can not only lead to a huge loss of traffic, but it can also affect your website's rankings.
How to get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress website
However, an SSL certificate costs anywhere from $5 per year to $1,000 per year and can add to the cost of running your microblog. Fortunately, there are several ways to get an SSL certificate for your website for free. In this article, we will go over some of the best ways to get an SSL certificate for your WordPress website.
What is an SSL Certificate?
When you add a product to a shopping cart, or post a comment on a blog, your data is sent to the server unprotected. This means that anyone with the right tools can sniff the network and read the information you've sent over it, including your name, address, credit card details, etc.
An SSL certificate ensures that all your data is encrypted before it is sent to the server. This prevents your data from being readable by anyone, making it difficult for hackers to intercept and steal your data.
Why do you need an SSL certificate for your website?
Although it is not necessary to have an SSL certificate on your website, the majority of people who use the Internet prefer browsing securely on HTTPS websites.
Anyone can easily identify websites that use an SSL certificate because there is a padlock icon next to the URL. While websites without an SSL certificate will display a warning sign.
»»With SSL:
»»Without SSL:
Get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress site:
Let's look at how to get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress website.
1. CloudFare
In general, most CDN services include a free SSL certificate in their package. So if you are planning to sign up for a CDN service, you can consider the options listed below to get a free SSL certificate as well.
However, these same services can charge anywhere from $5 to $1,000 depending on the use case and data your website consumes on their servers.
If you are just starting your blog or website, you can use a free CDN service like Cloudflare which also offers you a free SSL certificate. They have a very user friendly interface designed to build internationally scalable applications and provide a free SSL certificate for WordPress sites.
Go to CloudFare and create an account.
On your account homepage, click Add Site.
Enter your website URL without the HTTP prefix and click Add Site.
After adding a website, choose a free plan from the list of alternatives.
Cloudflare will check your website's DNS records.
After the scan is complete, you will be asked to check the current domain name server records for your website. Click Continue.
Cloudflare will assign name servers to its own server. You need to replace your website's existing name servers with new servers. After you have copied your name servers to your domain name registrar, click Done, check name servers to be taken to the domain settings.
Click Get Started.
Toggle off “Automatic HTTPS Rewrite” and click Save. This will force all web traffic to the HTTPS version of your website.
Turn on "Always Use HTTPS" and click "Save" to redirect all traffic from the HTTP version of your website to HTTPS.
Optionally, you can enable the Auto Minimize feature to improve the delivery of web content.
You can also speed up your website loading speeds by switching to the Brotli feature.
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After you have finished setting everything up, click Finish. Now, your website will be converted to HTTPS automatically in a few hours. This process may take up to 24 hours to complete depending on how long it takes your domain registrar to update your website's name servers.
