ssl and 301redirect for idiots like me

[pmccoy505]

I purchased and activated and ssl certificate for my site.  They said I had one more step:

"

301 Redirect

To complete the SSL certificate process another step is required. The secure SSL requires a 301 redirect which creates an encrypted connection between the visitor and your site.

Can you tell me how to do that, while assuming the last solid coding I did was in APL back in the 70's?

Thank you.

peace

pgm

[Paul-M]

It probably means to set up a 301 redirect in htaccess file to make sure if a non https request is made its redirected to https

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on

RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301]

Let me know if you need more help

[Paul-M]

Even better is probably to make sure all requests are on https and www with something like this:

#FORCE HTTPS AND WWW.

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off [OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(?:www\.)?(.+)$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^ https://www.%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301]

It will help prevent canonical issues with www. and non www URLs

[Nancy OShea · Accepted solution]

Does your web host give you a c-Panel to work with?  Often that's where you make changes to the server's .htaccess file.

How to edit your .htaccess

[BenPleysier]

It may be an idea to find out what type of server that you are dealing with. The other two replies assume that you are hosting your site on an Apache server, but if it happens to be a Windows server, you will need to make the changes in web.config. If the server is an NGINX box, the changes will have to be made in the Plesk Panel as per