Configuring SSL on your website

We are in the Digital Era and the speed at which the innovations happen are phenomenal. Amidst all these digital disruptions there is a concern of raising cyber crimes. As an end user there is a constant worry of personal information being compromised. We the millennials are blessed with networking protocols which protect us from data theft.

HTTPS is one such protocol which is used for secure communication over the network. HTTPS consists of communication over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) within a connection encrypted by Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).

What is SSL?

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This secure link ensures that all data transferred remains private.

Who requires SSL?

• If you are an e-commerce store accepting credit card information of users on your website
• If you have a form collecting sensitive information of the user like passport information, personal particulars, address, photos, documents etc.,

How do I know if the site has SSL?

SSL is visible to the users in the following ways

• A padlock icon in the address bar
• The website address starting with https://

How do I get SSL on my website?

Gone are the days, when IT administrators were needed to do network configurations. The complicated jargons and the numerous abbreviations used by the network team could intimidate anyone from even trying these configurations. The world today is ruled by CloudFlare, Distil Networks, Myra Cloud to name a few.

CloudFlare to me personally was easy to understand and use. It offers a free Universal SSL plan to any website in five minutes, which prompted me to give it a try. It indeed took me less than five minutes to make my website secure and get a valid certificate.

The user experience of configuring SSL on CloudFlare needs a special mention. It was extremely easy, I just had to add the site in the input field and everything was auto filled for me (IP, Registrar). I then chose a free website plan which offered me Basic security protection, SSL, fast website performance and always online. That was it and they straight away gave me the name servers that should be configured on the registrar’s dashboard. In the registrar’s dashboard copy paste the DNS1 and DNS2 to point to the nameservers given by CloudFlare. The website is now on SSL and has https:// access.

So all it took me was three simple steps: Add site on CloudFlare -> Choose the plan -> Configure the DNS on registrar.

The complete screencast of the procedure is illustrated step by step in the video below

What are the advantages of having SSL?

• The moment users see https in their url, there is sense of security
• The trust will lead to increase in sales and lower the bounce rates
• Google ranks the SSL pages higher, SEO of your site gets better

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