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SSL encryption is a must nowadays and no blogger gets around anymore.
But changing your own blog to SSL is not that easy. Good that there is a plugin, which decreases the work.
Below I present the popular WordPress plugin Really Simple SSL , give practical tips and describe my experiences.
Why an SSL encryption?
In times of the DS-GVO the data protection became even more important for website operators and bloggers.
Especially the transmission of sensitive customer data (eg in the submission of a comment) must be secured in the future, otherwise warnings and fines. So it’s pure self-protection, if you take it seriously.
In addition, Google has been favoring encrypted websites in the rankings for some time . This is currently not a big factor, but that will certainly become more important. In addition, the Chrome browser already displays unencrypted websites as insecure. That too is not ideal, as some visitors will probably jump off.
In sum, it is now easy for bloggers to implement SSL encryption.
SSL Certificate
In any case, you need an SSL certificate to do the encryption. On the one hand, there are fee-based certificates that provide additional information and exams. These are useful eg for eCommerce websites.
For most blogs, however, a free Let’s Encrypt certificate, which most German hosters now offer. It is an initiative of large Internet corporations to promote the encryption of websites.
With just a few clicks, you can activate a Let’s Encrypt certificate for your own domain in the backend of your own hoster.
Really Simple SSL
Instead of making complicated settings in the hoster settings or in the .htaccess file, the plug-in Really Simple SSL does this work for us.
It is a very popular WordPress plugin, which has been downloaded more than 14 million times and is active in more than 2 million blogs. There are regular updates and also the support for the plugin is very good.
With one click you activate the SSL encryption of the entire website, which works very well in my experience.
I have the plugin in use, among other things on my new website microphone and podcast tips . After installation, the settings page can be found under “Settings> SSL”.
There is not much to do there. In the “Settings” tab you also activate the “Mixed Content Filter”
