- Hey guys, my name is Christian Taylor.
Welcome back to Craylor Made,
and today I'm going to be showing you
how to install SSL for free on your WordPress website.
So first, I want to say that this is just my method I use
to install free SSL for WordPress,
there's actually a lot of different methods you can use
to install SSL.
For example, some web hosts automatically include
integration with Let's Encrypt.
So they let you install SSL easily
right in the panel of your web hosting
and not have to set up CloudFlare
like I'm going to show you how to do.
But number one, Let's Encrypt certificates
have to be regenerated every 90 days.
Not every web host does this for you,
some do automatically and that's great
if you have a web host that will do that.
But number two, there's also a lot of benefits
to install in CloudFlare besides just getting free SSL.
So I'm going to show you exactly how to set up CloudFlare,
how to get free SSL on your WordPress website.
And if you're wondering,
is there any reason I should pay for an SSL certificate,
then I have a complete video you can watch on that
over there,
but essentially this video is just a straightforward,
basic tutorial on how to install free SSL
step-by-step on WordPress.
If you're wondering about the fundamentals are free
versus paid SSL, check out that video over there.
So hopping over to our website here,
we've got my WordPress site, christiantaylor2.xyz.
And we can say here, it says Not Secure.
Now, you could say,
well, Christian, I know why that is.
You just have to put https://, hit enter,
ah, your connection is not private.
This is telling us that we don't have a proper
SSL certificate installed on the server.
This is when a lot of you may think,
I have to go buy an SSL certificate, but you don't.
I'm going to show you exactly how I get around this
and get free SSL with the lock icon, eliminate this error,
and also speed up your site and secure your site
with some added benefits.
So to do this, I'm going to go over to cloudflare.com
and click get started for free.
I'm just going to create an account,
and click create account.
And I'm just going to click get started under Cloudflare.
Now, right here, we're just going to enter our website URL.
So for me, that's christiantaylor2.xyz,
and click add site.
Now, this is where a lot of you get tripped up.
I get a lot of comments saying,
Christian I tried to set up CloudFlare
because you speak so highly of it.
You said it was free,
it's telling me it's $20 a month.
I'm not going to pay $20 a month.
That's good, 'cause you shouldn't.
I wouldn't pay $20 a month either per site for CloudFlare.
Maybe if I could pay for like every site,
but that's beside the point.
CloudFlare is free.
So what do you do?
Well, actually, all you do is just scroll down.
You just scroll down, right here.
Not sure where to get started,
get started for free, click this box,
boom, you can click continue.
So now CloudFlare is scanning our DNS records.
And what this means is it's looking at where our website
is currently pointed and copying all of those records
so it ends up in the same place.
Now, if you're like Christian, English please,
well, I've got a whole video explaining
the DNS system in different types of DNS,
so I would recommend watching that video
if you want a better explanation
of exactly what's going on here,
but now we're going to dig into the next step.
So once CloudFlare is done scanning the DNS records,
I'm going to scroll down here,
and this looks like a pretty typical setup
for DNS records on a website.
So again, to make this as simple as possible,
the A record on christiantaylor2.xyz
is pointing to the IP address of your web host.
And we're going to want to confirm that this is correct
just to make sure when we switch everything over
to CloudFlare, nothing breaks
and we're still pointing to the web host.
You should also have either a CNAME or an A record
under www.
Just leave whatever method CloudFlare scans,
I find typically it's a CNAME, but again,
let's not get too much into the details here.
What do we need to do to make sure this is correct?
Well, we just want to double check that the IP address
is the valid and correct IP address with our web host.
So I'm putting up a screenshot for cPanel hosts,
it would be in the right sidebar,
kind of by the top it will list the IP address.
I happen to be using Cloudways,
so for me, I'm going to go over to my Cloudways panel
and just click on my project here,
and I've got public IP address here,
so I'm able to verify,
starts with four, five,
ends with two, two, four,
I go back to CloudFlare,
it starts with four, five,
ends with two, two, four.
And if you're not able to find your IP address,
just reach out to your web host support,
they should be happy to provide you with it.
Now, the only reason we do this is just to be extra cautious
and make sure that CloudFlare scan the records correctly.
I've literally never run into a scenario
where it scans it incorrectly,
but I always do check because if this IP address is wrong,
if it doesn't match,
your website is actually going to go down
and you're going to have to figure that out
after you switch the routing to CloudFlare.
Now, for these MX records, that's fine.
We're going to leave all that.
That's just for whatever email hosting
you have configured already.
So that's going to go ahead and transfer over.
Nothing should change
since all of these records are scanned correctly.
So I'm just going to scroll down here and click continue.
So now comes where we get to change the name servers
with our domain registrar.
I'm going to be doing this with Namecheap,
but you can do this with Dynadot, Porkbun, Google Domains,
literally, wherever you have a domain name,
it's not hard,
it'll be right in your panel to manage your domain,
and if you're unable to find it,
again, reach out to your domain registrar
and they will be happy to help.
But I'm going to say click to copy
for this first name server here.
I'm going to go over to my Namecheap panel,
find my domain and click manage.
And I'm going to scroll down to where it says name servers.
And I'm going to change this from Namecheap basic DNS
to custom DNS.
For name server one, I just paste it.
Go back here, copy name server two,
go to Namecheap,
paste in a name server two and click save.
Now, while that's saving,
I'm going to go back to CloudFlare and click done,
check name servers.
And then on this, I'm just going to click finish later.
So this is the annoying part of the tutorial
where we have to have a lot of patience.
It can take anywhere from 15 minutes to sometimes 24 hours
to update the name servers of your domain name.
And while this is updating,
nothing on your website is going to change,
so we can't proceed yet with finishing adding SSL.
Everything is just changing over to pointing to CloudFlare.
So for the sake of this tutorial I have a second domain name
that I've done this whole process on 24 hours before,
so we don't have to wait.
But in this stage of the tutorial,
you may have to wait up to 24 hours to go to the next step.
So you're just going to see this page here,
it's saying, complete your name server setup.
You can say check name servers down here
to have CloudFlare refresh the status.
Just keep refreshing the page
seeing if there's a status update from CloudFlare.
And as long as it's still telling you this,
that you need to change the name servers,
your website is not ready to go yet.
Now, when you refresh your page and you get this great news,
CloudFlare is now protecting your site,
we're ready to proceed to the next step.
And now, I can actually open a new tab,
I can go to christiantaylor1.xyz,
and you say, Christian, it says not secure.
Well, wait a minute.
This time, if we add https:// and we hit enter,
ah, look at that, we got the lock icon.
So the only last thing that we're going to do here
is make it where when we visit WordPress without HTTPS,
it's going to have the lock icon, no matter what.
And I use a free WordPress plugin
called Really Simple SSL to do this.
Now, here's why I've given out the disclaimer,
there are many ways to do this.
I find that Really Simple SSL is what works for me.
There is a way in CloudFlare that you can say forced HTTPS,
it's around here somewhere, it's some setting,
but I just like to do it within WordPress using a plugin,
it makes me feel better that way,
that I'm not going to get like an HTTP redirect loop.
Sometimes that happens if you try to do it with CloudFlare.
So to do this,
I'm just going to go to my admin panel in WordPress
do /wp-admin at the end of my domain.
Once I'm logged in, I'm just going to go over to plugins
and say add new and search for Really Simple SSL.
I'm going to click install now,
and then activate,
and all we have to do,
get ready for this,
all we have to do is say,
go ahead activate SSL.
Bam, we're done, that's it.
Now again, there's like premium versions
and more settings you can mess with if you want,
but this is really all I do to get free SSL forever
on my WordPress website.
So now if I open a new tab,
I can just type http://christiantaylor1.xyz,
so I specifically don't have HTTPS.
And if I hit enter,
I'm redirected to HTTPS,
we can see the lock icon here.
And every page I click,
it's going to have that lock icon,
and we successfully have installed free SSL
on our WordPress website.
If you have any questions whatsoever,
as you're going through this tutorial,
just drop a comment down below
and I'll try my best to answer.
But hopefully this tutorial helps you out.
And if you're interested in a step-by-step guide
on building a WordPress website from start to finish,
do be sure to visit the link in the description below
and sign up for my email list for Craylor Academy,
as we'll be launching that on June 1st, 2021.
If you're interested in that,
definitely check out the link below.
If you liked this video,
do be sure to hit that subscribe button and click the bell
so you don't miss when I release new videos.
With that said, I'll catch you guys next time.