1.
SSL/HTTPS
What, When and How!
Chris Burgess – Melbourne
WordPress Meetup 2017
@chrisburgess chrisburgess.com.au

2.
Overview
• What is SSL?
• SSL growth
• When should you use SSL?
• Cost of an SSL certificate
• Enabling SSL in WordPress
• Common pitfalls
• Benefits
• SSL tools
• Further reading

3.
https://wptavern.com/more-than-50-of-web-traffic-is-now-encrypted

4.
HTTP Requests 2011-2017
http://httparchive.org/

5.
SSL by Default 2016-2017
https://trends.builtwith.com

6.
What is SSL? (via Wikipedia)
• HTTPS (also called HTTP over TLS,[1][2] HTTP
over SSL,[3] and HTTP Secure[4][5]) is
a protocol for secure communication over
a computer network which is widely used on
the Internet. HTTPS consists of communication
over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) within a
connection encrypted by Transport Layer
Security, or its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer.
The main motivation for HTTPS
is authentication of the visited website and
protection of the privacy and integrity of the
exchanged data.

7.
The Difference Between HTTP and
HTTPS Traffic
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33934408/intercept-html-form-post-data

8.
When Should You Use SSL?
• Ecommerce sites
• Whenever dealing with sensitive data
• When user trust matters

9.
When Should You Use SSL?

10.
Enabling SSL
• In theory, changing your home and site URL in
WordPress should be enough:
define('WP_HOME','http://example.com');
define('WP_SITEURL','http://example.com');
• In practice, we sometimes need some extra
help

11.
Forcing SSL for Logins
// Force SSL all WordPress
define( 'FORCE_SSL_LOGIN', true );
define( 'FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true );

12.
Mixed Content

13.
WooCommerce

14.
cPanel SSL Management

15.
cPanel SSL Management

16.
Cost of an SSL Certificate
• $10 to $10,000
• Average cost $50 - $150 for single domain
• Wildcard (for multiple subdomains) can cost a
little more
• Let’s Encrypt is free!

17.
WP Force SSL

18.
Easy HTTPS Redirection

19.
Really Simple SSL

20.
Mixed Content Report @ Why No
Padlock
https://www.whynopadlock.com/

21.
SSL Checker @ SSLShopper
https://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-checker.html/

22.
SSL Server Test @ Qualsys SSL Labs
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

23.
Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator
https://mozilla.github.io/server-side-tls/ssl-config-generator/

24.
OpenSSL Testing
• You can also use OpenSSL for testing,
example:
> openssl s_client -connect
example.com.au:443 -servername
example.com.au -status

25.
Let’s Encrypt
https://letsencrypt.org/

26.
Ranking Boost (2014)
http://searchengineland.com/google-starts-giving-ranking-boost-secure-httpsssl-sites-199446

27.
Ranking Boost (2014)

28.
A Basic SEO-friendly SSL Migration
Checklist
• Add https variants in Google Search Console
• Check and fix any hard coded resources that would cause
mixed content warnings, ideally use relative rather than
absolute URLs
• Update internal links to https variant
• Ensure 301 redirects are in place for all http URLs
• Update sitemap links (but do not replace old sitemap until
301s are indexed) and robots.txt (if used)
• Test all URLs are accessible, fetch and render with
Googlebot
• Configure the web server to send SSL headers (optional)

29.
Further Reading
https://www.feistyduck.com/books/bulletproof-ssl-and-tls/

30.
Further Reading
• https://wptavern.com/more-than-50-of-web-
traffic-is-now-encrypted
• http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-
tutorials/how-to-add-ssl-and-https-in-
wordpress/
• https://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl
• https://chrislanauze.com/design-
development/wordpress-meetup/how-to-
configure-https-on-wordpress-683/

31.
Thanks!
Chris Burgess – Melbourne
WordPress Meetup 2017
@chrisburgess
@chrisburgess chrisburgess.com.au