In a previous tutorial we saw how move from http to https but I told you that for this our hosting had to give us the possibility of adding an SSL certificate. In this tutorial we are going to go one step further, we are going to add a free SSL certificate even if our hosting charges for it, as is the case with Hostgator 😉
In this tutorial we will see how to do it in Hostgator but it would be valid for any other server that does not offer you SSL by itself.
Hostgator It is a very cheap hosting that allows us to install many websites cheaply but instead charges for installing the SSL certificate, but we have found the free solution.
We are going to do it with a service called CloudFlare.
Cloudflare is a service that, in addition to offering us a free security certificate, will speed up our website and make it more secure.
The best of all is that we do not have to change hosting, just change the DNS and all this in its free plan.
Video tutorial
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The first thing we have to do is sign up for Cloudflare, to sign up it just asks for an email and password:
Once registered, we enter the cloudflare and we have to register the domain to which we want to add free SSL. You can register as many domains as you need.
You add the domain and it will start scanning it to see all the DNS of your page. Since to make cloudflare work we will have to change the current dns for the ones that Cloudflare will give us:
Once it has finished scanning, it tells us that if we want to continue with the configuration and it shows us on the screen all the dns it has found, we click on continue and it gives us a choice between the plans offered by CloudFlare. We choose the free plan:
We click on continue and now it tells us that we have to change the old DNS for the new ones in our domain. And don't worry, as Cloudflare has scanned all the DNS, the web will continue to work at all times.
How do we modify the DNS of our domain?
Depends on where you bought it. Let's remember that we have the hosting in hostgator but normally we will have the domain registration in another company.
In the video of this tutorial you will see how to do it in 1and1 and in GoDaddy.
In each registrar it will be done differently but it is always the same procedure. For example, in 1and1, within the domain configuration, we click on "Adapt DNS settings"
And we change two DNS that point to hostgator for those that cloudflare has given us:
This process can take up to 24 hours, to continue with the configuration I recommend that you do not rush and wait at least 24 hours to be sure that the DNS have been changed
When the DNS change is ready, Cloudflare itself will notify us that everything is ready.
By default Cloudflare activates DNS, we don't have to do anything to configure it. You can see it in the "Crypto" button.
We will realize that we already have the certificate because if we enter our website but instead of http we put https in the url we will not get this error screen:
As long as you get that error, Cloudflare has not finished configuring.
Once we no longer get that error, we will enter our WordPress and install the plugin Really Simple SSL
Once activated, if everything has gone well and the security certificate has been detected, it will ask us if we want to activate SSL, we say yes and if everything has gone well, we already have our website with the certificate installed 😉
I hope you liked it and that you pass your web to SSL since Google sees with worse eyes that we do not have the webs without the SSL certificate.