Knowledgebase

In this article, we will show you how to properly move WordPress from HTTP to HTTPS by adding an SSL certificate.

There are three ways you can get an SSL certificate, (a) if you purchase a hosting account with one already included, or (b) purchase an SSL certificate from SGIS, or (c) you can purchase an SSL certificate from an independent source and manually install it (this is only possible with the SGIS Grow and SGIS Pro accounts)

With the SGIS Pro account, you will receive an SSL certificate already included.

If you have already purchased an SGIS account with the free SSL certificate please follow these instructions to install it.

1. Log onto your SGIS hosting Control Panel and on the right hand of the screen you will see a number of options available to you under main headings, scroll down to the “SECURITY” heading
2. Click on the option marked “SSL/TLS”
3. You will be taken to a new screen where you can enable the SSL certificate that came with your package or you can enter the details of the purchased SSL Certificate here.
4. After you have enabled SSL certificate on your domain name, you will need to set up WordPress to use SSL and HTTPS protocols on your website.
   Note: If you have not set up a WordPress theme as yet, this process should be simple as changing a few settings in your WordPress dashboard, however, please keep in mind that if you have already set up a theme for your website then as part of this method, you may need to edit WordPress theme and code files.
5. Log into your WordPress dashboard, and from here you need to scroll down to the “SETTINGS” on the left under the WordPress dashboard menu.
6. Under the “SETTINGS” menu go to the General page settings screen
7. Under the “GENERAL SETTINGS” Heading look for the two sub-headings “WORDPRESS ADDRESS (URL)” and “SITE ADDRESS (URL)” in the boxes on the right of these headings you will see your website address starting with “http//example.com”
8. Change the “http://” part of your address to https://example.com (where example.com is your website name)
9. After changing the address to “https://” in both boxes scroll down to the “SAVE” button at the bottom of the page.
10. Once the settings are saved, WordPress will log you out, and you will be asked to re-login.

After logging in to your WordPress dashboard again, you can now check if you are operating under the HTTPS:// protocol by visiting your website from the dashboard.

Open any page of your website and look in the URL address line at the top of your browser, you should now see a padlock (in the locked position) and that’s it! You’re now operating your website in SSL mode.

Note: If this has not helped, then there may be a few other things that your WordPress site may need additional changes making to it, such as code changes in the htaccess file. Some people are not confident with this process, in which case please refer to further articles or try and work with your host provider or a WordPress expert to help you with this.