What is SSL?
The full form of SSL is Secure Sockets Layer. Though SSL is now depreciated and TLS has taken over. Still, for the sake of usability, the term SSL is more popular than the term TLS.
SSL is needed to secure/encrypt your website. It gives you the advantage to rank higher in SEO as well. Without the certificate, you can not include any payment gateway on the website. Reports said that showing the ‘lock’ sign or Green sign after HTTPS on your website makes users more comfortable to make their purchase decisions. There are many paid SSL certificates in the market but there are FREE too.
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There are many certificate providers in the market like SSLForFREE.com, LetsEncrypt.org, and zerossl.com, etc. Here, we are taking SSLForFree.com to show how to show https for FREE. Note: We are not affiliated with SSLForFree.com.
Step By Step Guide to get the Https
Firstly, let me tell you the accesses that you require to install an SSL Certificate. You need Hosting account credentials and FTP credentials or File Manager access from your Hosting Account.
If you do have the mentioned credentials, now you can proceed to the next steps.
- Go to SSLForFree.com
- Enter your website domain and click on the ‘Generate Free Certificate’ button.
- It will ask you to verify your domain and you can do it by three methods i.e FTP Verification, Manual Verification, and DNS Verification. something like this in the picture
- If you choose Automatic FTP Verification, It will ask you for your FTP user name and password so that it can be verified that the domain is yours. The picture of the FTP verification box is given below. Once the user name and password are given, click on the Download Free Certificate button.
- Alternatively, you can choose Manual Verification as well. I will suggest you follow this process so that you don’t have to share any credentials with them. (Though SSLForFree is a very reputed organization, our endeavor should always be to maintain safety as much as possible. Click on the ‘Manual Verification’ button. Scroll down and you will see two File Download links.
- Download both the Files.
- Now, login to your Hosting Account and Go to Cpanel.
- Go to File Manager in Cpanel.
- Now go to the base directory of your website. In most cases, this is the ‘public_html’ folder.
- Create a folder and name it .well-known as shown in the picture. In some Hosting account, folder name starting with . (dot) is hidden by default. If your folder is not visible even after you create it then Go to Settings in File manager and Choose the option ‘View Hidden Files’ option.
- Open the .well-known folder and create a folder and name it acme-challenge
- Upload the files which you have downloaded.
- Now, Go back to the SSLforFree website. You will see two links are given there.
- Click the links and if it has shown some random numbers means the site is verified. Alternatively, you can verify your website through DNS.
- Click on the ‘Download Certificate’ button.
- Certificate, Private key, CA Bundle will be displayed on this page.
- Now go to Hosting Account cPanel and Go to SSL/TLS option. The name may be different for different Hosting Provider.
- Click the SSL/TLS option.
- Paste the Certificate Code, Private Key Code and CA Bundle code here.
- Click on the Install button.
- Congratulations!!! You have just secured your website absolutely FREE for 3 months.
Conclusions
Now that you have secured a website for 3 months for FREE, I would suggest every business use a paid certificate. Some providers will secure your websites for a lifetime. But, for a Start-up or blog website, this is a good FREE option as well.
Read more about Website Security