How To Use A Free SSL Certificate With Bluehost Hosting

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Complete Guide: How to use a free SSL certificate with Bluehost hosting

Undoubtedly, Bluehost is one of the best web hosts for WordPress. It is a faster and most secure web hosting platform to manage WordPress blogs and websites. 

Well, what do you think is the most important factor when maintaining a website or blog? Security, right? To provide great security for websites and blogs, Bluehost is offering a free SSL certificate. If you do not know how to use a free SSL certificate with Bluehost, then this article is for you.

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This article explains clearly how to use a free SSL certificate with Bluehost. If you are not hosting your WordPress site with Bluehost, not to say you are losing many benefits. To check out if Bluehost suits all your requirements, you must read the Bluehost review article.

Also, you will be surprised that Bluehost has already started Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and offering discounts up to 60%.

Immediately after you start using your WordPress site with Bluehost, an important task you need to do is securing it. Also, if you are running a WordPress blog or website and did not secure it yet, this is the time. Stick till the end to know how to use a free SSL certificate with Bluehost hosting for new websites and already existing sites. So, are you ready to secure your website with an SSL certificate for free? 

Why do you need an SSL certificate for your website or blog?

Did you know the SSL certificate is one of the ranking factors according to Google? The more secure your website is, the more Google loves it and so are the people. SSL brings value and more visitors to your site, as it is the symbol of security. Nobody wants to provide their information simply visiting an unsecured website. People are more aware of security threats these days. And moreover, you need to protect your website from hackers and harmful malware.

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Hence it is an important task to secure your site with SSL certification. Before that, let us give you a short description of what is SSL certification and how much does it cost?

What is SSL?

SSL which stands for Secure Socket Layer is a networking protocol. It is used to secure connections between web servers and web clients(browsers)on the internet which is an insecure network. SSL certificates enable Https protocol on websites for securing them and ensures all the communication between browsers and web servers are secure and private. This is why you need an SSL certificate for your website.

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When talking about the costs of SSL certificates, you can get them for free from some companies like Let’sEncrypt. You can secure your blogs and sites without spending any money from your pocket.

If you are an online store owner or running any transaction-based website, then you need to get Extended Validation or Organization Validation(EV or OV) certificate from paid providers like GeoTrust and Sectigo.

Lucky are the users hosting their sites on Bluehost… As said earlier, Bluehost offers an SSL certificate free for its customers. The other web hosting users can request their hosts to enable free SSL. 

Hope by now you may have understood how important is an SSL certificate for websites.

Let’s start using a free SSL certificate with Bluehost.

How to use an SSL certificate with Bluehost hosting?

Make yourself free for at least 60-80 minutes, as there are a couple of other important tasks you need to do after you implement everything to manage your traffic.

Step 1: Disable WHOIS

Firstly, you need to disable WHOIS guard and WHOIS information of your domain. You have to do this only for a few hours. After you activate the SSL certificate successfully, you can toggle WHOIS guard for your domain.

Step 2: Enable SSL Certificate

Said that Bluehost offers an SSL certificate for free, you can simply enable it from your Bluehost cPanel.

Login to the Bluehost account and go to your dashboard. Then tap on “My Sites” and click on “Manage Site”. You will get a page with Overview, Users, Backups, Performance, Security, and Settings.

Select Security and turn on the button that says Free SSL Certificate.

You will receive an email about your free SSL certificate from Bluehost billing support.

It may take 5-45 minutes for an SSL certificate to install. If it doesn’t get installed, toggle the button again. You will get a screen saying installed.

In case you want to check if your domain is secured with an SSL certificate, you can check it on some free SSL checker tools like SSLShopper.

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Now, you have successfully activated your domain with an SSL certificate. Here starts your real work if you are securing an existing WordPress site with SSL. Because you need to migrate your Http site to Https which is going to affect your traffic. 

So let us see how to move your WordPress site from Http to Https

How to move a WordPress site from HTTP to HTTPS?

It is not just important to migrate your site from Http to Https, you need to do it in the right way. Did not get it? Everything you do needs to be search engine friendly or else you will have to end losing your traffic.

So, here are a few steps to move your WordPress site to Https without losing any traffic.

Bluehost automatically updates the website’s URL and your site will be accessible with both Http and Https.

But the thing is you need to redirect Http site to Https site to eliminate the Http version of your website.

You can do this by installing Really Simple SSL WordPress Plugin to drive traffic on Http to Https. As the name says, it is really a simple and easy-to-use plugin. Activate the plugin, once it is installed.

 

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Done with activating the plugin? Great!

Now the next step is to add a couple of lines in your .htaccess file.

You can do this in two simple ways:

  1. Using Yoast SEO plugin edit the .htaccess file.
  2. Or edit the file via FTP.

All you need to do is add the (below) code at the beginning or end of the .htaccess file.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST)%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301, L]

You are done with redirecting traffic from Http to Https site by using a simple plugin and adding a few lines of code. Now its time to update all Http URLs in your database to Https. Well, how do you do it? Simple! Let’s install another WordPress plugin – Better Search Replace.

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This really a cool and awesome plugin searches all Http URLs and replaces them with Https. Simply install and activate the plugin, and it takes care of the rest. Do not forget to backup your database before you run this plugin.

Migrate all third-party links to Https

Now, you are done with replacing your own links with Https. The work is not over yet!

You need to secure your third party links with Https. Install Broken Link Checker Plugin and activate it. It lets you know unsecured 3rd party links using a simple redirection module which you can secure them anytime within the plugin.

If you using a Cloudfare CDN or a Cloudfare plugin for your website, you can activate SSL in the Crypto section(you can view it once you visit your Cloudfare dashboard). Then enable “Automatic HTTPS Rewrites” to migrate your site to Https.

SEO tips to migrate your Http site to Https

  • Do not forget to update your profile link on Google Analytics.
  • Update your Https site to Google Search Console and then submit your Sitemap.
  • Share your updated Https website links on digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc.
  • Reminder: If you have not enabled your WHOIS guard yet, you can do it now. (Do not forget!)

Yay! You have finally done with using an SSL certificate with Bluehost and migrating it to a secured version. Give yourselves a pat on your back!!!

Final Thoughts

Hope this “How to use a free SSL certificate with Bluehost hosting” helps you activate SSL for free and protect your website.  Free SSL is one of the great benefits of Bluehost hosting. Moreover, the WordPress integration inside the hosting platform made it even easier to activate anything within less time. Hope you all make you of it in order to secure your site from malware and other cyber attacks. Also, do not forget to migrate your Http site to Https in an SEO friendly way to prevent a decline in your traffic.

Not to miss, if you are not using Bluehost hosting yet, get it here for an amazingly discounted price. 

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