How to install an SSL on your website

This tutorial is for people whose hosting companies use CPanel! And is hopefully a beginners guide. There are a lot of steps, but I have screenshotted every single one for an SSL I did yesterday. SSL means that your site’s traffic to and from the server is encrypted. Nowadays Google favours SSL protected sites, and they are pretty cheap, so it would be silly not.

How do you know if you have an SSL already? There will be a padlock in your browser bar before the web address like this.

Take a deep breath and here we go. All text of things you need to click will be in bold.

Firstly make sure you have an email address or forwarding for admin@yourdomainname

Log into your hosting company CPanel and scroll down to the Security section.

Depending on the theme your host uses it should look like this.

Click on SSL/TLS

The next screen will look like this

The first job is to create a “Certificate signing request”, So click on Generate, view, or delete SSL certificate signing requests.

Don’t bother with a Passphrase, but otherwise fill in all the fields.

After clicking Generate, the next screen will show your Encoded Certifciate Signing Request

Keep this tab open as you will need to copy that

Now head over to www.gogetssl.com – I’ve found these boys to be the cheapest

Click on New Order

I normally go for the GoGetSSL Domain SSL for 5 years.

Select and scroll down to click Next Step.

Once you have paid and got back to the Next Steps Screen, click on Manage SSL

Find the Incomplete one – which will be at the top! Click on View

Next click on Generate Certificate

If it is your first SSL, then it’s New Order and as you are following a cPanel tutorial your web server software click All/Other.

At this stage paste your CSR code from earlier

Click Validate CSR at the bottom and you will get the Validation methods screen

This where you will use the email address or forwarder you set up at the start.

Next you need to fill out some personal details…

We are nearly there.

Leave this tab open!

Meanwhile the domain validation email should have arrived…

Copy the validation code and click on Confirm Validation

As soon as that is done, the SSL will be issued.

Go back to the gogetssl.com site and click on Continue to SSL Management

This will be the next screen. Click on Certificate to download a CRT file.

Now go back to your cPanel website tab and click on the 9 squares on the left to get back to the main menu, then SSL/TLS to get to this screen.

Then click on Generate, view, upload, or delete SSL certificates

Click on Upload a certificate

Scroll down to Choose a certificate file

Upload the CRT file you downloaded from gogetssl.com or the one sent in one of the emails you will have received!

Scroll down to the domain name you are working on and click Install

You will get a screen like this next. Click Install Certificate

You have installed an SSL on the site!

Now finally login into your website and goto Dashboard>Settings

change those two URLS from http:// to https:// and hit Save.

You will be logged out and need to login again. But you are finished!!!!

Your website should always have a padlock now. If it doesn’t, you may have some low quality plugins that don’t use https on a secure site. Right click, View Source and search (CTRL F) for http:// to see what’s wrong.