On July 24th Google released chrome 68, now all sites that don’t have https will show insecure on the browser. All our current hosting packages offer FREE SSL. if you haven’t already, then you really need to get your site ready. Any legacy plans can migrate to get this functionality.
Visitors to your site will already be seeing the insecure aspect of the site, and by October the browser will show a red bar/writing that the site is not secure. Google are really pushing all website owners to secure their sites with SSL for a safer browsing experience, which makes a lot of sense. Although any site that isn’t already SSL secured then you have already started paying the price with your rankings dropping, it wouldn’t surprise us if in the future they don’t even list in search engines.
How to Change
Most CMS sites only need one line of changing from http://example.com to https://example.com however the commonly used CMS out there is WordPress, unfortunately this is a little more complex as the media URLs and dependant plugins will have the old http:// prefixes in the database.
This requires you to backup the database and the carry out a find and replace MAKE SURE YOU BACKUP FIRST.
Here is a useful article on carrying this out https://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL also there are plugins out there but again you need to check that all media has been converted to https.
Lots of sites out there explain that all you need to do is change your home and site URL, although that will make the site show https in the browser your padlock will not show, and your site will still be insecure due to the content (images will still be http)
Most importantly do the right thing, secure your site, secure your visiting customers and secure your rankings. Privacy must be everyone’s no1 focus when running a site.
Free SSL
If you are new to Birch and you order hosting and the domain at the same time the SSL will install for you, however if you change the nameservers after you have purchased (normally the case with customer migrating or domains elsewhere) you can press the run AutoSSL in cPanel and the SSL will be installed within 20 minutes.
Auto installers
We have now changed all our auto installers to only allow https:// or https://www. Installs you can’t install http anymore.
If you have any questions, please get in touch and we are here to hep and point you in the right direction or even carry out the change for you.
