What’s A Free SSL?
How Good Is CloudFlare Free SSL?
Do I Use A Free SSL, From CloudFlare? – Yes!
CloudFlare Free SSL for any site. How? As, we know CloudFlare is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that means it stands in front of your blog or website to catch traffic before it get to your origin website server.
A CDN is basically offers you a caching and efficient delivery of resources but with CloudFlare Free account one can get CloudFlare Free SSL for free. The only downside is the SSL is Certificate will be shared with many more unrelated domains. But the CloudFlare Free SSL is easy and inexpensive to get HTTPS for any site.
SSL Certificates are a easy way to encrypt all channel between the client and server. SSL Certificates are used during transmission of such data like Credit Card details, account login information or so. Having an SSL Certificate data gets encrypted prior to transmission via Internet to prevent eavesdropping.
A SSL certificate itself represented by the base64 encoded data that includes information about the entity where it was issued such as public key required for encryption of a digital signature verification.
Mostly a SSL Certificate is issues on the server side and when you access the website secured by an SSL Certificate issue by the Certification authority, will look like [su_highlight background=”#ffa399″]→HTTPS:// at the beginning of the URL[/su_highlight] depending upon that a certificate is issued to the applicant. This means when users visits your site come can see “Connection is secure” with a “Green bar” displaying at the address bar.
Are you one started blogging few years back and looking for a free SSL encryption for your blog. Unless, you want to spend some bucks to get a paid plan from reputed SSL vendors. If you don’t know where to get these paid plans you might need to check this article.
In this post, I basically show a way up to get a CloudFlare Free SSL. As we all know Google has made this as mandatory counting HTTPS as one of the important ranking aspects. That means using a HTTPS or secure layer connection will increase the chances of ranking higher in google search results.
The most possible reason why most of us don’t have SSL or secure (green bar) in our site because having an SSL cost expensive. It’s a 3rd party vendor where mostly we buy a added security layer to protect from theft, hack or malicious attack. Previously switching to HTTPS was troublesome as well as expensive and without having technical knowledge it becomes cumbersome for some peoples.
Thankfully, SSL certificates are now comes at cheap prices and you may get it when buy a hosting service, because most of the hosting provides it for free. But for those did not have this feature installed can get a CloudFlare Free SSL. Yes they release a free version that exactly does a similar job and it’s even easier to set up.
You can reach CloudFlare from here.
How To Setup Your Free CloudFlare Free SSL Certificate
For setting up a [su_highlight background=”#ffa399″]CloudFlare Free SSL[/su_highlight] you need to visit the CloudFlare official site and sign up.
- Pick the Free Plan you see there
- Follow the steps by adding your domain name
- When you have registered it successfully, you need to setup your domain by clicking on your domain
- At the setting menu you’ll come across a option called “Crypto”. It’s basically at the top row of icons you see there.
The first option that you’ll get a SSL, make sure you select the [su_highlight background=”#ffa399″]Flexible option[/su_highlight] in it.
- Also Read : How to Get BigRock Coupon for Hosting
Now, I suppose you have completed the above steps successfully. You have just requested for a CloudFlare Free SSL. Now, CloudFlare will check your blog address and a Free SSL will be issued on your URL.
You can find the respective SSL by entering your [su_highlight background=”#ffa399″]blog URL with “HTTPS://”[/su_highlight]. If you have followed everything correctly it will display a green secure bar box beside your blog URL.
Step-By-Step To Setup CloudFlare Free SSL Within Your Website/WordPress Blog
In your WordPress backend. You have to leave your WordPress Address (URL) and site (URL) as HTTP. The next thing you can do is to install both this Plugin for HTTPS to work nicely.
Step 1 Install CloudFlare Flexible SSL Plugin
This plugin is essential when you have a flexible SSL on your wordpress blog or website. This will prevent infinite loops when loading WordPress sites under CloudFlare’s flexible SSL System.
Step 2 Configure WordPress HTTPS Plugin settings
You need to check out and go into the Plugin setting after activating the plugin. Now, what does this plugin does that it isn’t that necessary if you plugins and links are on your blog or website are already having HTTPS. Mostly links aren’t so that is why this plugin changes them all to HTTPS.
You can take a look at Really Simple SSL WordPress Plugin (Free).
- Go into the Plugin setting
- Ensure the option YES in proxy setting
- Save it
Step 3 Configure CloudFlare Setting To Deliver The Content Via HTTPS
- You need to go back to CloudFlare
- Pick your domain name
- In the row of items shown in the upper hand of the screen. Select Page rules
- You find a option name use HTTPs always on. Make sure that the option is active on the panel
- Add your domain name as the screenshot shown below. Enter it as the page rule in between two asterisks
- Click on add a rule
Step 4 Change Your WordPress Site Address (URL)
Finally after applying these changes will make the site Address (URL) to “HTTPS’://” but ensure that the WordPress Address (URL) remains as “HTTPS://”.
PLEASE NOTE: If you would like to change the WordPress (URL) to HTTPS:// it will break your site. Also, if you change your Addresses (URL) without having the CloudFlare Plugin running will also break.
Final Words : Ensure CloudFlare Free SSL Working
Now, when you’re completely done setting up your first free CloudFlare Free SSL Certificate. Just visit your website after clearing cache to check if the green padlock is showing on the top of the address bar. It should show a secure button if you have followed every steps correctly. If you face any issues setting up a CloudFlare Free SSL. You can always come back here and ask any question regarding setting up your CloudFlare free SSL. You can use the comment box below to reach me. It will only take few hours before for me to check and reply to you all.