Having a blog with SSL certificate is must have on today’s date. However it may seem like lot of technical stuff to enable SSL certificate. Thanks to SiteGround hosting that is now making it easier for their users to use free SSL certificate powered by LetsEncrypt.
If you are installing a new WordPress blog on SiteGround hosting, you don’t nee to do anything to enable HTTPS. It works out of the box.
However, for an existing WordPress blog on SiteGround (Like this blog), there is a quick way to enable HTTPS. In this tutorial, I’m sharing how you can enable SSL certificate on SiteGround shared hosting.
How to enable HTTPS on your WordPress blog
SiteGround is known for their technology innovation to make the work easier for their users. They have a plugin SG optimizer (Earlier known as Supercacher plugin), with the help of this plugin you can move your existing WordPress site to HTTPS with one click.
Here is how to get it done:
- Install SG Optimizer WordPress plugin (Download link)
- Activate the plugin
- Go to SG optimizer > HTTPS config
On this page, you can enable HTTPS. The best thing about this plugin is; it takes care of every important thing like automatically redirecting existing HTTP traffic to HTTPS, fixing Mixed content warning & avoid duplicate content penalty.
According to plugin help page, here are things that will be taken care of when you enable HTTPS on SiteGround hosting:
- It will redirect all your traffic through HTTPS. Thus, your site will always load through a secure connection, and you will avoid duplicate content.
- It will also make the connection to any resource your site includes secure. This way the visitors will not see the mixed content warning in the browser. Note: If your site includes a resource from an external location that cannot be reached via HTTPS this resource will no longer be loaded on your site.
- Once your site is loaded through HTTPS, it will also automatically take advantage of the HTTP/2 protocol too.
All you need to do is toggle the button that says Force HTTPS
Once you toggle the button to enable the HTTPS feature, you need to re-login to your WordPress blog. That’s it & now your blog is moved to HTTPS automatically.
However, once you have migrated your WordPress blog from HTTP to HTTPS, you need to do follow things:
- Add your WordPress blog to Google Search console
- Add your new sitemap with HTTPS URL
- Edit your Google Analytics profile to change the site URL from HTTP to HTTPS
- Update your site URL from HTTP to HTTPS on your all major social media profiles
Easy! Is int it?
Well, that’s what you get when you are using a popular hosting like SiteGround.
Do check our other articles to do more on SiteGround hosting. If you know someone who needs hosting from SiteGround, do share about this discount with them.
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That seems easy but will there be any issues when it comes to images?
@Carolyn
Nope..That will be automatically taken care by the plugin. 🙂
I followed your tutorial and was able to move to https version but my social plugin lost all previous shared. I used SumoMe social plugin and would appreciate if you can suggest a solution. Thanks.
@Sunny
That happens because the permalink has changed. You can use Social warfare plugin. I used that to recover my social share after migration from HTTP to HTTPS.