In this short tutorial, you're going to learn how to enable secure SSL HTTPS protocol on your WordPress website.
In this day and age, having a valid SSL or secured domain is vital for any online business.
Whether you sell digital products or physical goods online, it's a good idea to ensure that your site displays the secured padlock in the address bar. (See image).
This is crucial for two reasons -
So, let's look at how you can make your site secure quickly using a simple SSL solution.
Before you make a start, you'll need to have a valid SSL certificate for your domain.
This is usually free from most good web hosting companies. Look for a "Lets Encrypt" option in your web hosting cPanel.
If you're hosting your website or blog with SiteGround, all you need to do is go to cPanel > Security > Let's Encrypt. (See image below).
Pick the domain name you'd like to create an SSL certificate for and hit Install. (See image below).
Now, usually this would be enough for a brand new WordPress install and you would not need to do anything else.
However, if you already have a website with a lot of pages that have been on HTTP non-secure, you might run into problems where your website is accessible through both HTTP and HTTPS protocols, as well as have a bunch of mixed content warning issues. You'll need to fix this.
This is where using the Really Simple SSL plugin comes in.
Install and activate this plugin like any other plugin via the Plugins page in your WP dashboard.
Next, go to Settings > SSL and ensure the following boxes are ticked by default. See image below.
Tick any other boxes only if you think you need something enabled.
Next, go to the Configurations tab to detect your setup. (See image below).
You're done, for the most part, just reload your website to check the results, it should now be loading over HTTPS-secured SSL protocol.
If you're still getting mixed content warnings on your website, check out this post for a detailed tutorial on how to fix those issues.
