For modern business, securing a website is one of the primary concerns when it comes to protecting data that is posted online and or gaining the trust of users who visit the website. One would also wish to improve the level of security on your site, the best way is to install an SSL on a site to encrypt data transferred between the site and the users. In this particular piece of writing, I shall provide you with five simple instructions on how you can install an SSL on your website.
The first steps; buying your certificate
The first procedure which needs to be completed in order to install SSL certificate on website is buying it from certificate authority. Many are available, some may be well-known like Comodo, Symantec, and Let’s Encrypt, among others. Some of the CAs may offer a general certificate that may meet your needs, it is therefore advisable to go for CA that offers a certificate in that category that you want; a single domain, wildcard or multidomain.
The second step; getting the CSR from your hosting control panel
After you have purchased your SSL certificate, the next step would be obtaining your CSR from your hosting control panel. The CSR is information about your website and it is employed by the CA to generate the SSL certificate. After this, you will have to submit the CA with the CSR and any other information that may be necessary for the certificate issuance.
Have the server
Once you have your SSL certificate you want to install it on the web server of your website you the CA has registered to. In order to load the RoR application that we have developed, the process depends on the type of server that is being used, whether it’s Apache, Nginx or any other web server software. This is because the installation process of the SSL certificate will depend on the server software you are using and therefore require the strict adherence to the guidelines your software provides for such a process.
Change to HTTPS
After the SSL certificate is placed on the server, the next procedure involves changing all your site to use the HTTPS instead of HTTP. This can most often be done by changing your CMS to point your website’s URL to https or by setting up your server software to automatically redirect all the HTTP traffic to HTTPS. In its broad sense, HTTPS makes all data that is transferred from the website to the users and vice-versa to be secure.
Last but not least, it is necessary to check everything after you have installed and configured SSL certificate for your site. If a website owner wants to know all the details about his site’s SSL certificate or check if there’s a misconfiguration that might lead to security issues, he can use the popular Qualys SSL Labs. Like every other thing in life, installing an SSL certificate is not a herculean task; in fact, within ten minutes, by following these five simple steps, your website is secure for the benefit of you and the user.