A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Facebook’s new SSL requirement and services that you could use to manage that.
I recently discovered that one of my favorite hosts, Hostgator, offers free SSL certificates, even on shared hosting.
Here’s how you can set this up. Of course, you must be hosting with Hostgator.
Instructions
- First you need to know what server your site is on. This information is in the welcome email you received when you first signed up with hostgator. It is also available in your cpanel along the left side under Account Information. It should look like have gator and then three numbers – gatorxxx.
- Replace gator with the word secure so you will have secure+the three numbers – securexxx
- So, the first part of the SSL address with be https://securexxx.hostgator.com
- You will then need to add your username in this format – /~username/
- You will know have the following – https://securexxx.hostgator.com/~username/
- If you Facebook page or other content that you need to deliver securely is in a subdirectory you will need to add that to the URL – for example, https://securexxx.hostgator.com/~username/facebook/
That’s all there is to it if you are using hostgator’s shared hosting – you don’t need to sign up for anything extra and you can use that same URL format any time you need to use SSL.
As an aside does anyone remember playing on the merry-go-rounds shown in the photo at the top of the article? I do but I haven’t seen one in a long time. I guess they are now considered too dangerous but they sure were fun!
This post contains affiliate links
photo credit: D Sharon Pruitt
I started using secured URLs on my HostGator VPS accounts mainly to access webmail. For shared hosting, I haven’t used it yet :)
Coming here after a long time. Did you change the post content anchor styling to orange? Or was it already orange??
Hi Ajith – Yes, they have been green, orange and gray depending on where the links are located :-)
Thank you so much Kim…I’m using Hostgator but I never read about this opportunity.
Excellent guide,I will test it!
Great – it’s pretty easy to set up.
I have been thinking of switching to Hostgator but never had the chance to do that… I think I should now because of this feature… Thank you for sharing..
I’ve had a really good experience with them.
I’ve heard of HostGator in passing. Now, I will investigate them a little more.
Thank you, Kim!
I’ve been very pleased with Hostgator.
Kim, what do I need put in for the page tab URL? For some reason my page tab content is now only displaying when secure browsing is activated?
Any ideas?
Hi Alastair – Sorry for the delay – hopefully you have already worked this out. The Page tab URL should have the full url including the name of the page. http://www.domain.com/nameofpage.html – it shouldn’t be the URL for secure browsing.
Hey Kim, well wow, this post was written a while ago but it still was clearer than what I read back at the HG forums.
All I wanted to do was to place an image inside a protected folder so it doesn’t raises any alerts when using a custom page with paypal checkout.
They say you *may* run into browser alerts anyway but I guess there’s only one way to find out lol
Anyway thanks a lot for the info, I’ll definitely try this. ;-)
Sergio
PS. Awesome site and services!