How to Use a bluehost free ssl certificate for WordPress - 2021 Edition

How to Use a Free SSL Certificate With Bluehost Hosting for WordPress (2021)

Bluehost is one of the best web hosts for running WordPress based blogs and websites.

They are also one of the ShoutMeLoud recommended WordPress hosting companies. In the past, I have shared many tutorials to help you use and get the most out of Bluehost hosting.

Here are some of the most popular:

How To Buy Hosting And Domain From Bluehost Hosting
How To Install A WordPress Blog On Your Bluehost Hosting

In today’s exclusive tutorial, you learn will how to use a free SSL certificate with your Bluehost hosting. Using this guide , you will migrate your WordPress blog from HTTP to HTTPS.

Read Also:

According to Google, the use of SSL is one of the positive ranking factors. In addition, SSL adds a higher level of trust to your blog.

When it comes to SSL certificates, you have the option to use both free and paid.

Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase a tool through one of the links, SML will receive a small commission for coffee ☕️, at no extra cost.

Before we proceed, let’s learn a little more about SSL certificates so you know what you’re doing.

First of all, there are different types of SSL certificates.

For an information-based site (such as a blog), make good use of a free SSL certificate.

The most popular company for issuing free SSL certificates iis Let’sEncrypt. They have completely changed the model of SSL certificates and they have made it easier for individuals like you and me to start using SSL certificates without paying a penny.

However, if you run an ecommerce platform or a transaction-based site, consider using an EV (Extended Validation) or OV (Organization Validation) certificate that you can only get from a paid provider.

Optional Reading: What to Know Before Buying an SSL Certificate

In this tutorial, I will share all the steps you need to follow to start using a free SSL certificate for your WordPress blog hosted on Bluehost hosting.

Remember this is an important task and you at least an hour should have to complete it. After you move your site to HTTPS, there are a few other things you need to do to ensure that your traffic isn’t affected, so you need to make sure you set aside enough time.

Are you ready?

Full Tutorial on How to Use a Free SSL Certificate on Bluehost Hosting for WordPress

Note: Before you start following the steps, make sure to disable your Who.Is guard and the Who of your domain. Information has been updated.

You only need to do it for a few hours as sometimes Bluehost sends an email to validate domain ownership.

After you have successfully activated the SSL certificate, you can re-enable the Who.Is guard for your domain.

Let’s get started with that with this epic guide …

Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase a tool through one of the links, SML will receive a small commission for coffee ☕️, at no extra cost.

So Bluehost now offers a free SSL certificate for their users straight from the Bluehost cPanel.

To use it, log into your Bluehost dashboard and click My Sites> Manage Site

Save.

Click Security to access the SSL options panel.

Set the button for ‘Free SSL certificate’ to On. This will start installing the free SSL certificate on your Bluehost hosting account.

Save You

may see a pending notification and this message:

“Working …

We are setting up your SSL – this may take a few hours. In some situations, we may ask you to take action. Then you will receive an email with instructions. Feel free to explore WordPress now or start building your website. “

Save

You will also receive an email from the Bluehost billing team about your free SSL certificate purchase.

Here’s a video guide to the same:

In my case, I let the page work for 45 minutes and it was still loaded. I ended up reloading the page and had to toggle the “Free SSL Certificate” button back on.

This time the page stopped loading in 5 minutes and I got the last screen.

This means that the free SSL certificate is installed on the domain and we can now migrate our site from HTTP to HTTPS.

It is a good idea to use an online SSL checking tool like this one to check if your domain has an active SSL certificate or not.

Here is the result of my test domain after adding the free SSL certificate:

If you are doing this for an existing WordPress site, your real work starts here.

There are a few steps you need to take to make sure you switch from HTTP to HTTPS correctly. In addition, you also need to take care of SEO.

Don’t worry though, as this tutorial will walk you through every step of properly migrating to HTTPS.

Moving your WordPress site from HTTP to HTTPS

Now after activating the SSL certificate, the next step is to force everything to load on HTTPS and also make sure that the HTTP to HTTPS migration is search engine friendly. If you don’t, you may be missing out on traffic.

Follow all the steps below and in the next 10-15 minutes you will have successfully moved your WordPress blog to HTTPS.

Note: SiteGround A2 Hosting and InmotionHosting users can also take advantage of a free SSL certificate. Ask your hosting support team to enable a free SSL certificate for you and follow these steps below to further complete the migration from HTTP to HTTPS.

Install Really Simple SSL Plugin

When you enable your free SSL certificate on Bluehost hosting, the site URL will be automatically updated.

At this point, however, your site can be accessed with both the HTTP and HTTPS addresses.

By using the Really Simple SSL WordPress plugin, all your traffic on HTTP will be automatically redirected to HTTPS.

This is an easy plug & play plug-in.

After installing and activating the plugin, you will see a screen like this:

Save

Click Go ahead, activate SSL!

Edit your .htaccess file & add the code for HTTP to HTTPS redirect.

You also need to add these few lines of code to your WordPress .htaccess file.

You can edit this file with the Yoast SEO plugin or via FTP. Here’s a guide for more information on how to edit the .htaccess file.

At the beginning or end of the .htaccess file, add:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond% {HTTPS} off

RewriteRule (. *) Https: //% {HTTP_HOST}% {REQUEST_URI} [R = 301, L]

Once this is done , you are almost done moving your WordPress blog to HTTPS.

Update all HTTP URLs in the database to HTTPS using Really Simple Plugin

The Really Simple SSL Plugin + the .htaccess code above will help you redirect all traffic from HTTP to HTTPS. However, it is a good idea to update all existing links from HTTP to HTTPS.

You can do that with the help of a WordPress plugin called Better Search & Replace.

Install and activate the plugin. Togo to Tools> Find and Replace use the plugin,.

Note: Please backup your WordPress database before running this plugin.

Save

Once this is done, you can also uninstall Broken Link Checker plugin and use the redirect module to find links to third-party sites with HTTP that should now be HTTPS.

This is a normal practice I follow to keep my site’s SEO intact.

Now it’s time to make some changes to your Cloudflare dashboard (or by using the Cloudflare WordPress plugin).

Steps for CloudFlare Users

In my previous blog posts, I told you to start using Cloudflare because it helps in many ways:You Should Start UsingAway

5 ReasonsCloudFlare Right
How to Set Up Free CloudFlare CDN for Your WordPress Blog

Go to Crypto & under “SSL” change the settings to Full.

Save

On the same page, scroll down and enable Automatic HTTPS Rewrites.

Save

that is it!

Now your HTTP to HTTPS migration is complete.

However, you still need to do some quick things:

Submit your new HTTPS site to Google Search Console and submit your sitemap.
Update your profile link on Google Analytics.
Update your website links on social media profiles and wherever they are. You can do this step in pieces for the next few days.
Read this guide to learn more about HTTP to HTTPS migration and how to resolve mixed content.
If you have disabled Who.Is guard for your domain name, you can enable it now.

Well that’s it! When you’ve completed all of the above steps, pat yourself on the back. It’s time to celebrate.

You should treat me to this guide sometime too.

However, if you are activating a free SSL for an existing blog, you should also follow the steps above to ensure that the transition from HTTP to HTTPS does not affect your traffic.

For a new blogger just starting out, all you need to do is enable HTTPS as soon as you buy hosting from Bluehost.

Get hosting from Bluehost

Free SSL + PHP 7 + Free Domain

Now it’s your turn to let me know: How did your migration from HTTP to HTTPS go? Have you encountered problems and how did you overcome them? Let me know your experiences in the comments below!

Do you find this tutorial helpful? Share it with others who use Bluehost for their WordPress blog!