Free SSL for Everyone - Encrypting Your Sites Has Never Been Easier
Happy New Year!
Today is an exciting day for us because we are now ready to release a brand new feature to WA that is going to really set your website up for 2017 and beyond. As technology evolves, it is important to stay ahead of the curve and that is exactly what we are doing with our FREE SSL and the roll out of our SitePlus+ platform.
Introducing our latest addition to the SiteRubix family of services, SitePlus+
SitePlus+ is a new set of features and services that is associated with all of your websites that are hosted here at WA. With this new platform, you are going to be able to toggle on and off features of your website that have been built from the ground up at WA to improve how your website functions, is perceived by Search Engines, how it’s experienced by your visitors, and how secure it is.
To Access SitePlus+ features for your websites, you will see a new SitePlus+ area within the SiteManager dashboard. From here you can click on SitePlus, or you can click on the “Details” button to access.
SiteSSL - FREE Security Certificates For Your Website!
Recently we updated the community with the news that we were going to be soon delivering a brand new and absolutely monumental addition to the features offered with our SiteRubix website platform...and today it’s available to all Premium members of WA!
SiteSSL installs your very own Secure Certificate on your website so that all data transferred from a user’s browser to the hosting servers is encrypted. You’ve likely heard that Google and the other major search engines are preferring SECURE websites with SSL Certificates - this is exactly what they are after and this is going to become more prominent in the ranking factors in 2017.
Securing data by installing an SSL Certificate means that if someone finds your website at Starbucks there is no chance of a third party spying on any data transferred from that user’s browser, to the server. Maybe you’re on your best friends WIFI connection and you are entering your password to login to your website admin area - this is now encrypted so that there is no way your friend, or some malicious virus / malware could intercept that password and take control of your site.
All of your edits to your website will be encrypted and safe, all of your logins will be encrypted and safe, and your website is going to be preferred by Google when it comes to rankings and positioning.
SSL security is certainly not new, we are not re-inventing the wheel by any means with this, but what we are re-inventing is how SSL certificates are installed, and also how much they cost.
Typically the cost of an SSL certificate on a website can be up to $100+ dollars per year for a 256-bit encrypted connection signed (authorized) by a reputable company. Many hosting companies also charge installation fees for SSL certificates to be installed (or removed) from your website.
At WA, we do not believe in holding you hostage with fees associated with SSL - this is why we’ve always been careful with recommending SSL to people who really NEEDED it vs WANTED it. We believe that in 2017 and beyond, everyone at WA needs SSL certificates to be available to them, and for a cost that absolutely EVERYONE can afford...FREE.
- No Installation Fees.
- No Yearly Fees.
- No Extra Fees Period.
All Premium members of WA can have SSL certificates for websites they’ve registered either through our SiteDomains platform here at WA, or from elsewhere when you’re hosting your website with us.
Free SiteRubix.com websites cannot have SSL turned on - if you would like SSL for a website that is currently on a SiteRubix.com subdomain, then you can purchase a domain and move that website over, then enable SSL
Who is SSL For?
SSL certificates have been typically for websites that accept personal information, and more specifically payment info like credit card numbers, social security numbers, or even telephone/addresses. It’s important that personal data of your visitors is kept secure and encrypted so that it’s not possible to have the Internet connection that you use be hacked, have malware installed etc.
Think about your online banking for those who use it. When you login to your online banking from Starbucks (or the local coffee shop), you don’t want your password to come into contact with an insecure network where you could have that information stolen. This is where an SSL certificate is important. It encrypts the information so that even if it were intercepted, it’s impossible for anyone to decrypt it.
Google understands this too and they are on a mission to help secure the Internet by giving ranking preference to sites that are secure with SSL certificates. Does this mean that you absolutely NEED a secure certificate to rank? No, of course not. But, if Google has two sites they rank equally, they will give preference to the site that is served over SSL vs non-SSL.
Security plays a large role at WA in our decisions and new features added to the SiteRubix platform. We are extremely excited to make SSL Certificates available today!
How to Enable SSL on your Website
Enabling SSL on your website is simple.
- Browse to your SiteManager dashboard
- Click on the SitePlus+ link or Details button for the site you want to enable SSL on
- Toggle the switch from OFF to ON, or if you want to turn it OFF, then in the other direction
When you visit your website after SSL has been toggled to the ON position, you will notice in your browser address bar that the address will start with: HTTPS.
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com for example has for many years been encrypted!
SiteSSL certificates are instant and takes just a few moments to install. You should not experience any downtime on your website while enabling SSL.
And don’t worry about traffic going to your old http:// URL, this will now be automatically redirected to your https:// secure URL.
We also go one step further and update all of your internal links for you so that any links to posts, pages, categories etc, will be updated to use the HTTPS secure protocol. Conversely, when you turn SSL OFF, we switch your internal links back to HTTP :)
Potential Issues after Installing SSL
As with any change, installing SSL certificates can present some expected issues on any website. The most common issues you may face are:
- Plugins that are not compatible with SSL certificates
- Linking to non-secure websites. For example linking to an image on a website that is not served over HTTPS (SSL) is going to cause your browser to complain that there are non-secure items on your page. This is expected, and you can remedy this by updating links to media and files that are non-ssl, to HTTPS from HTTP as long as they support it.
If you turn SiteSSL on and your website does not work, you see errors or see something unexpected, then you can toggle it back off in an instant. That would be a good time to reach out to SiteSupport to for help by including as much details as you can about the issue at hand.
When we receive your SiteSupport ticket we’ll look into the issue and hopefully provide you with a solution right away!
We have met our personal goal of releasing our sophisticated and incredibly advanced SiteSSL platform to catapult into 2017 with a bang! We think that this and the many (many) more features and services we have slated for 2017 are going to continue to make websites created and managed here within the SiteRubix platform the BEST on the Internet.
As always, we would love to hear your feedback about SiteSSL and if you have any questions or have any issues with the set-up process of SSL on your website, please let us know know. :)
To a brilliantly secure & encrypted 2017,
Carson (& Kyle)
Recent Comments
335
Great to have this, thank you, who could ask for more!
I have experienced security issues with WA members sites, even on a page by page when looking at a site on behalf of another member which is really important as they can not see the problem from their end.
Go WA moving ahead in 2017!!
That's awesome! I noticed the new feature just a few hours ago and I was totally surprised. This post totally cleared things up.
It's great to be in WA community where you guys are always trying to provide us with as many conveniences as possible.
And imagine that I have been here for just about two weeks and I already understand your great efforts.
So, thank you very much Carson & Kyle for caring that much about us!!!
Thank you so much! It worked perfectly on one of my sites, but the other two got messed up so i had to disable ssl.
One got its interface messed up, the other one got a google chrome "not secure" connection warning. The strange thing is that the three sites are built exactly the same. Same theme, same plugins. I'll try again tomorrow and if I still get the same errors I'll notify support.
Thank you again!
Hey Andrik,
Try installing a plugin like "SSL Insecure Content Fixer" which will update any non secure URL's on your website and hopefully fix the "not secure" issue with your content. This is not a problem with the SSL certificate, it's an issue with your content having non secure elements (like images from a non-secure site) embedded.
Carson
One issue I discovered earlier tonight was that my social share counts were gone when I made the switch. After doing some reading, it kind of makes sense... Https is effectively a different URL.
I haven't tried it yet but apparently the social warfare plugin can help recover those shares.
But just a heads up for anyone who switches over... this could be a potential issue.
I'm hoping I'll have time to do this before the weekend, but I'll definitely share what I find.
This is absolute GOLD. You guys are awesome. The fact that it's all automatic and old links are re-directed means we don't have to do any remedial work on our sites.
This is just brilliant and all for the very affordable price of FREE.
Well done Kyle and Carson and the team.
Awesome news! I have always been impressed with how you guys keep on making WA better.
I must admit I've hosted some of my sites outside of WA, but I think I'm going to be moving them back. I know I'll be giving up some control, but I'll also be getting rid of some headaches as well. Not to mention the savings on the hosting fees!
This is awesome Carson. I love how easy it is to install SSL - I was expecting it would take a lot more work than simply toggling it on.
Thank you SO much for this feature. I know many members, including myself, will NEED SSL on certain sites (yet I'll apply it to all of mine regardless).
Have a great evening,
Ian
Promises made...promises delivered. Thank you Kyle and Carson for this great first of the year roll out! Now we are at the cutting edge of cybersecurity.
I'm going to wait a month before site postings to get the assessment of latest WP changes and the 2017 theme rolled in and changes shaken out to this great introduction!
Hi Carson,
This is one of the best moves lately (there have been many of course) that you and Kyle have made..
That the SSL service is free is a benefit that many here may not be aware of...
If you go to a big hosting service (almost all of them I think) you will pay an extra $10 a month for SSL (per site)...Plus the set-up fee, etc.
Very happy and I like the way 2017 is starting!
Cheers!
Dave : )
Yeah, and the integration is usually a headache on many of these other services. Not to the mention that SSL has the tendency to slow down sites drastically, something that was a big focus and the SSL handoff using the SiteSSL platform is instant and leads to no lag with our website.
A great way to start 2017 off indeed and we have a lot more where this came from! The factory is churning. :)
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Wow! I never cease to be impressed by the quality of service here at Wealthy Affiliate! You guys are amazing! I'm still really low on time, but as soon as I can squeeze a few minutes out of my schedule, I will go through the SSL set-up. It's a great option!