Rosrants.com is now using SSL Cert – Howto Set Up SSL For Free

This site is now using SSL. Pfft! About time, says you.

I am using a free cert from letsencrypt.org – it was all very confusing and magical to set up.

  • You need to use a ACME client – I used https://github.com/Neilpang/acme.sh as you do not need root access with this one.
  • Then SSH into your hosting server and run a couple of commands
  • wget -O - https://get.acme.sh | sh
  • acme.sh --issue -d rosrants.com -d www.rosrants.com -w /home/path/to/rosrants.com/folder
  • Lots of stuff is outputted to screen
  • Then do:
    acme.sh --install-cert -d rosrants.com -d www.rosrants.com \
    --reloadcmd "service apache2 force-reload"

The –reloadcmd is optional and will not work on shared hosting. In this case the results are not instantaneous, we need to wait for shared hosting provider to restart Apache. Anecdotally, I have been told this happens about once an hour.

That’s it! Start using HTTPS    ….well also not really… I had to configure WordPress >> Settings >> General and change the 2 addresses to https://

Also, you will probably get warning about mixed content – you have hard coded “http://…” in your site somewhere. Load your site, hit F12 key and check all the warning messages there, fix them – you can either hardcode to https://mylink.com or shorten the link to //mylink.com

then you get the big green SSL in the address bar beside your site! Yay! ^_^ joygasm!