HTTPS with Advanced Hosting
Friday, May 19th, 2017
You may have read that Register4Less.com has added to our paid hosting plans Let’s Encrypt, a free open-source SSL certificate. This certificate is now installed automatically when you order an advanced hosting plan, and has been installed for all existing paid hosting plans.
Benefits of having your site visitors connect using the https encrypted protocol include:
- Better Search Engine ranking
- Enhanced User Trust
- Protect your User’s sensitive information
Forcing an https:// Connection
When people visit your website, but default if they type in your domain without specifying https://, they will connect with a standard unencrypted http:// connection. Older links to your website may also not specify the secure protocol, so these would also provide un-encrypted connection.
You can however quite easily switch an http to an https connection by editing your .htaccess file. Here’s how to do this.
- Log in for your domain, and go to Paid Hosting > Manage Advanced Hosting to open up the cPanel window
- In the Files section, click on the icon for File Manager. This will open in a new window
- On the upper right click on Settings. If the option for Show Hidden Files (dotfiles) is not checked, check it and save.
- On the left column, click on the public_html folder.
- Look for a file named .htaccess in your public_html folder. If there isn’t one, go to File and create a new file named .htaccess in the /pubic_html folder.
- Select the file, and click Edit
- Paste the following two lines into the file, and click the Save Changes button.
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]