Installed Successfully Free SSL Certificate on WordPress Website running on Azure Web Apps

As I mentioned in my other blog post, I successfully set up TheCodeUniverse.com as a WordPress website on Microsoft Azure. Now, I am ready to install SSL on my website. It turned out the cost of buying an SSL certificate is not cheap. So I did some searching and was able to find a few blogs that showed how to install free and legitimate SSL certificates.

Let’s Encrypt was the SSL certificates that I found which are a free, automated and open certificate authority. You can find the details about it at https://letsencrypt.org/. The best reward for me is that it is free and renewable. On top of that, “Let’s Encrypt” is recognized by Google Chrome, Mozilla, and many other well-known vendors as shown in the image below. One minor caveat is you have to renew your certificate every three months. However, Simon J.K. Pedersen has created an extension plugin so that you can automate this renewal process. Big thanks to Simon!

Why do I need SSL when my site is not an e-commerce site that collects credit card information or offers any fund transactions? It turned out Google gives HTTPS as a ranking signal as detailed at this URL  https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html. Anyway, below are the sources that I followed to successfully install “Let’s Encrypt” certificates. 

• https://github.com/sjkp/letsencrypt-siteextension/wiki/How-to-install
• http://wp.sjkp.dk/lets-encrypt-ssl-certificates-for-azure-web-apps/
• http://www.siteextensions.net/packages/letsencrypt/

Take your time to read the sources of three URLs above before installing SSL to your site. Remember, this process of setting up free SSL certificates is for WordPress website running on Microsoft Azure platform. If your WordPress website is running on Namecheap, Bluehost, or GoDaddy, then the setup steps should be different.

Good luck with your WordPress endeavor.

Thanks for reading my blog.