[HOW TO] Free SSL & WordPress website

[pxoxrxn]

Everybody knows that Google is now using HTTPS as a ranking signal. But not everyone knows that you can get a free SSL certificate from CloudFlare and set it up in just a couple of minutes. After a painful hour of trying to figure this out I would like to share with you exactly how its done.

I'm going to assume that you have CloudFlare operating on your website, if not, do that. Your setup will be different depending on how you set DNS record so I'm not going to advice on that.

Once you have Cloudflare setup, you'll need to install two plugins to your WordPress website.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/cloudflare/
https://wordpress.org/plugins/cloudflare-flexible-ssl/

The first plugin allows you to control several Cloudflare settings from within your WordPress install, the second stops the redirect loop that may occur.

After activating the plugins, go to the settings for the cloudflare plugin and fill in the details. To find what you should put into these boxes, click the (Get this?) links next to each input. Your settings should look something like this.

On your WordPress website, navigate to Settings > General
Change your WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) to be https. That should look like this.

At this point, your website should log you out and force you to log back in under the https version. However, when you navigate to your website it doesn't automatically go to the http version and this is crap.

Go back to CloudFlare and click CloudFlare settings under the options cog. Look for something that says 'Page Rules'. Rember Ctrl+F is find, use it.

In these settings I want to make every page go to HTTPS so my rule is mydomain.com/* the * is a wildcard for any URL. Click 'Always use https' and click add rule. Your settings should look like this.

Your website will now force your https beliefs on everyone that visits.

If you are getting red padlocks, use this tool: https://www.whynopadlock.com/

Enjoy

 

[sam.hunt0710]

Thanks bro , for this awesome method.

 

[pxoxrxn]

Thanks bro , for this awesome method.

You're welcome, I hope it saved you some time

 

[Titans]

Nice share. Thank you

 

[Boriss]

Awesome. Thanks a lot for this.

 

[Yasin Rishad]

Many thanks to you dude for this valuable post

 

[Nut-Nights]

Going to setup this on my all sites Its awesome share. +rep

Guys dont do this shit if you dont know technical stuff, you will fuck lots of things.

 

[pxoxrxn]

Sorry I can't quote the post above. It depends what your rewrite rules say already. If you're redirecting www to no-www, write your rule for domain.com/* if you're rewriting to www, write the rule the other way around.

 

[boselect8]

This is great! Thanks..
Is there a known way to make it with godaddy?

 

[danielmartin]

This is a wonderful thread, thanks for sharing this to us!

 

[pxoxrxn]

This is great! Thanks..
Is there a known way to make it with godaddy?

Of course, you just need to add your domain to cloudflare and update your name servers accordingly. You'll find a guide if you Google it.

 

[lord1027]

Great tutorial, I've been using Cloudflare on many of my sites and never knew this could be possible.

 

[Zwielicht]

I remember reading about Cloudflare's SSL but I never went through with installing it on any of my sites. I suppose I'll give it a try right now, but I've been having problems with Cloudflare lately.

 

[SoccerLover]

Is SSL available with free account ? or do we need to upgrade it?

 

[Zwielicht]

Is SSL available with free account ? or do we need to upgrade it?

When I was signing up, Cloudflare stated that the free accounts could use Flexible SSL.

 

[SoccerLover]

Okay, I got it.

I've just one slight issue.
The home page is working fine with https, whereas further pages giving 404.
I've set the wildcard properly as well.
Can anyone help me please?

 

[cryptons]

Nice method buddy!

 

[Cyriac]

Good method bro thanks

 

[pxoxrxn]

I remember reading about Cloudflare's SSL but I never went through with installing it on any of my sites. I suppose I'll give it a try right now, but I've been having problems with Cloudflare lately.

What sort of problems are you having? I think most problems come from the website. I've had problems with cacheing plugins and CF for example. The problems are easily fixed if you can isolate them.

Okay, I got it.

I've just one slight issue.
The home page is working fine with https, whereas further pages giving 404.
I've set the wildcard properly as well.
Can anyone help me please?

In WordPress go to Settings > Permalinks and then scroll to the bottoms and click save changes. Don't get confused by thinking that the boxes are already ticked, so you don't need to click save changes, do it anyway. Make sure your .htaccess is writeable, if it is not you will get an error. If this didn't work, come back and let me know what's happening.

 

[Zwielicht]

What sort of problems are you having? I think most problems come from the website. I've had problems with cacheing plugins and CF for example. The problems are easily fixed if you can isolate them.

I've fixed most of the issues already, but now I can't seem to change the grey padlock with the yellow triangle over to a green one on the homepage. Every other page on the site that I installed Cloudflare on has a green padlock except the homepage for some reason, so I'm still looking for whatever is causing the issue.

Anyway, thanks again for reminding me about Cloudflare's SSL!