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The Fastest Switch From HTTP To HTTPS Before It’s Too Late

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According to W3Counter, Chrome’s market share has been the highest among the other browsers since 2012.
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Google announced on September 8, 2016 that, beginning in January 2017, they will “mark HTTP pages that collect passwords or credit cards as non-secure”.

The dilemma

The problem was, for me the price of an SSL certificate is rather expensive to have for my website which isn’t an e-commerce site at all. But as Google said they eventually “plan to mark all HTTP sites as non-secure”. This is main reason I decided to switch from HTTP to HTTPS once and for all.

Finding the right solution

So, I searched for a free SSL certificate solution and learned about Let’s Encrypt. “Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority (CA), run for the public’s benefit. It is a service provided by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG)”. Since I use cPanel for my hosting I jumped right into determining whether it has an available solution to install SSL via cPanel. SSH is the installation method that is very visible on their website. But when I checked my cPanel again, I saw that Let’s Encrypt is actually one of the tools already in there!

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So, I clicked that then clicked my domain in a table where it said I should select which domain I want to install an SSL certificate for. And, you what? That was all I had to do. Because when I loaded my site as https://www.coderseo.com in my browser there it was – the much coveted green padlock. My site became a secure site in just two clicks! I am so grateful for the people behind Let’s Encrypt.

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So, after showing you how I did it and you want to switch from http to https the same way, you need to find out whether your hosting provider supports it. Look for the tool in your cPanel first. If it’s there, you’re in luck. If not, ask your web host. Chances are, they can help you. If you have another site to launch and this time you want a hosting provider that supports Let’s Encrypt, here’s a list of those hosting providers.

After installing your SSL certificate you have to help search engines know about your switch from http to https. My post, HTTP to HTTPS Migration Without Risking Your Search Rankings shows you how to do just that so be sure to read it.

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