In this video, I'll show you how to get a free SSL certificate with the most up to
date method in 2020 I'll split this into three parts which is verification
installation and activation so at the end of this video you're not secure
message will be a green lock guaranteed.
Visit sslforfree.com and create a free account. Now, you'll need to click on
a new certificate and enter the website name you want your free SSL certificate
to be installed on and click next step. Choose the 90-day certificate as it's
the free one and click next step again. Leave these options as "Auto Generate CSR"
and click next step. Choose the free version and then click
next step for the final time and wait a bit for it to load, this might take like
10 or 20 seconds so don't worry it didn't crash. Here we have 3
different methods of proving that your website name you typed in earlier
actually belongs to you. I'm going to show you all 3 methods of
verification but you only need to do one and I'm going to use GoDaddy and cPanel
for this but it works on absolutely any web hosting provider if you can access
one of the three things which is file manager email manager or the DNS manager
by the way if you don't want to go through all of this trouble you can get
web hosting plans that have a free automatic SSL's meaning you don't have
to do anything. Included with every purchase like
Bluehost or SiteGround I'll leave the discount codes in the description down below
Navigate to your cPanel as I've mentioned before I'll be using GoDaddy
as an example and then find the email account section click on it. Once it's
fully loaded click the blue create button and type in admin as your
username think of a password for your email and click create again.
Once the email is created you'll want to go back to SSL for free click the next
step and then click verify domain.
Go back to your cPanel and next your newly
created email box click check email. After some time it took me like two or
three minutes you'll receive two emails open them click on go to verification
page and paste in the code that was sent in the email.
now do exactly the same
steps with another email that you should have received as well.
Once you're done
go back to SSL for free and refresh the page
if you validate it correctly you should see a button that says install
certificate, click on it. If you see the install certificate message then good
job that means you did everything correctly and you can skip to this part
of the video for the rest of the tutorial but if for some reason it
didn't work keep watching I'll show you 2 more methods of verification that
might work for you.
Choose the DNS (CNAME) option then go into your GoDaddy control
panel near your domain names click DNS scroll down and click "Add" from the list
choose CNAME and in the host tab copy and paste the name without your domain
name I'm not sure why but it doesn't work if you copy and paste everything at
least for GoDaddy. So, you need to copy and paste everything before the first
dot then copy and paste everything from the points to tab into the point to tab
on GoDaddy and finally for TTL choose a half an hour and click Save. Go back
to SSL for free click next step and then verify domain. So, you should see if this
screen if everything went successfully and you can skip to this part in the
video for the rest of the tutorial but even if this didn't work then keep
watching I'll show you the final method of verification that's guaranteed
to work.
Click here to download your authentication files, once
the download this complete access file manager from your cPanel. You'll now need
to find a folder that contains the files of the website you're trying to get an
SSL for. It can be named the same as your domain name or public_HTML
if you don't already have a folder named .well-known inside create one
yourself by clicking on +folder inside this folder create another folder
called pki-validation
And simply upload the files you've downloaded
earlier inside pki-validation.
If you did everything correctly you should see
a similar screen when you click the link from SSL for free, finally just click
next step and verify domain.
So, it doesn't matter which of the three
methods you used to verify as long as you can download your certificate you're
good to go so here's what to do once you have your
certificate.
Click on download certificate this is where all the files
for your SSL certificate are located once the download is complete click next
step open up this zip file that you've downloaded and you'll see three files
inside of it save them somewhere on your computer the location doesn't really
matter just remember where you put them.
Once the files are on your computer go
back to cPanel find and click on the SSL / TLS option and then click manage SSL
sites. Select the website name you want your certificate to be installed on. Now,
we'll need to open these three files that we've downloaded earlier with some
sort of a text editing program I'll do it with notepad as I feel most
people should have that on their computer. Just right-click on
certificates.crt choose open with if you don't see notepad click more apps find
notepad and click OK. Now, copy/paste all of this text into
this certificate box on cPanel.
Now, for the private key you'll want to
right-click on it then choose properties near the open with tab click change
then choose more apps and once again find the notepad. Now, you'll be able to
open it so copy and paste all of the text into the private key box on cPanel
and finally for the certificate authority bundle do exactly the same as
with certificate before right click on it and open it using notepad finally
copy and paste everything then click install certificate.
A lot of the work is
now done you have the SSL certificate installed so you need to force people to
use it because users can still access the unsecure version of your website so
in this next part I'll show you how to do that using a wordpress plugin.
go into
your WordPress dashboard, you can reach it by typing the website name followed
by /login if that doesn't work try /WP-admin once inside
WordPress navigate to plugins then click add new and search for really simple SSL
then click install and activate.
When you activate you'll see this go ahead and
activate SSL button once you click the button your SSL will be fully
working and your site will have the secure tag.
if you're using WordPress
this should be it your website will now be secured by an SSL certificate for 90
days and once the 90 days are up you'll just have to redo these steps and
install a new certificate now even the people that use the HTTP version get
automatically redirected to HTTPS so there's actually no way anyone can reach
the unsecured version of your website but be very careful with this you can
actually get locked out of your website or your WordPress
admin panel if you uninstalled the SSL certificate or it expires before you
renew because what happens is you force people to use the secure version but you
no longer have the secure version so you understand how that creates a problem
so be very very careful with this have a backup somewhere of your website if this
happens and if you don't want for this to happen simply use a web hosting
provider that gives automatic free SSL certificates like Bluehost and
SiteGround. I'll leave discount coupons for these
providers in the description down below if you found this tutorial useful
consider subscribing because my channel is all about web hosting and website
related tutorials also if you're having any troubles with this feel free to
leave a comment down below I'll try to answer and help you out the best I can
as always good luck making your website and I'll see in the next video