Creating a more secure site via HTTPS

[zetter]

My new rep from my hosting company doesn't know Dreamweaver at all, but is willing to come on Teamviewer on my computer to assist me with Dreamweaver settings. Because I would like his help in providing a more secure hosting site so that the site goes from HTTP to HTTPS, can someone perhaps create a small template or screenshot here that I can show him what fields he'll need to fill in?

Thanks.

[WolfShade · Accepted solution]

Getting your site to go from http to https doesn't have anything to do with DW settings.  Unless I completely misunderstand your request.  http to https is a matter of purchasing (or, some are free) a TLS certificate (SSL is no longer secure) and installing it on the webserver.

V/r,

^ _ ^

[zetter]

Thanks, Nancy. I thought making a site more secure actually was nothing more than a specific setting that the hosting company would want me to plug in somewhere on the "Manage Site" area of Dreamweaver. I didn't know it was an actual purchase.

[WolfShade]

There's a company called Let's Encrypt that can get you a simple TLS certificate (can't be used for protecting purchases, and doesn't guarantee identity, but does encrypt data) for free.  AND, if the hosting company works with LE, you can even set it so that the certificate is renewed automatically.  You don't have to manually renew it, it's scripted by the hosting company.

HTH,

^ _ ^

[Nancy OShea]

WolfShade  wrote

There's a company called Let's Encrypt that can get you a simple TLS certificate (can't be used for protecting purchases, and doesn't guarantee identity, but does encrypt data) for free. 

Yeah, there's Let's Encrypt, Cloudflare and even Comodo offering free SSL certs these days.

I purchased a Comodo multi-domain certificate for $10/year per domain which isn't bad.  And Comodo's domain verification process is quick & painless.

[WolfShade]

Did not know that even Comodo is doing free certs, these days.  Thanks!

V/r,

^ _ ^

[Nancy OShea]

If your server already has the certificates installed, you will want to change any site wide links containing HTTP to HTTPS with Find & Replace.   This handy online service will help you identify mixed media that causes a broken padlock.

https://www.whynopadlock.com/

You should redirect all inbound server traffic from HTTP://yoursite.com to HTTPS://yoursite.com.  Ask your hosting rep how to do this on your server.

Finally, when everything is working correctly, be sure to tell Google Console (formerly webmaster tools) that your preferred URL is HTTPS.