Knowledgebase & FAQs

How do I enable HTTPS/SSL on my Linux Web Hosting Plan?

To enable your WordPress enabled Web Site to use HTTPS (Secure Sockets Layer) mode the following basic steps should usually be followed:

1.
You must have a Hosting Plan that allows Secure Certificates and have had this feature enabled. You may need to contact our Support Team to arrange this.

2.
Once you are enabled, you need to change the settings in Wordpress. You normally do this by going to Settings > General in wordpress and change the:

- WordPress Address
- Site Address

to start https:// instead of http://

3.
You can also force administration of your WordPress site to use secure mode by changing the security settings in your "wp-config.php" file:

define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true);

4.
You now need to tell the Web Server that runs the WordPress site to start sending all users - including those who try the http:// version to be redirected to the https:// version of your web site automatically. You can do this by making changes to the .htaccess file on your web site:

--------
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourwebsite.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.yourwebsite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.yourwebsite.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]
--------

(replacing "yourwebsite.com" with whatever your actual web site address is)

5.
You may need to re-publish some of your WordPress files/pages, or if you use any third party components, plugins or images that have web site addresses starting with http:// you'll need to change those to https:// (on the assumption they're also secure enabled) otherwise you'll still get warnings about security.



Please note:
These are basic guidelines for making changes to your Wordpress site. VPW Technical Support do not provide assistance on Web Site changes of this type as part of your Hosting Plan. If you need further assistance from us, you can buy a chargeable support incident (or if you have a Premium Support Plan, use that).

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