How to Install Free SSL Certificate on your WordPress Website Hosted on NameCheap

Hello!

Welcome to our blog! This is going to be our first blog post. Thank you so much for being here.

As the first post, I wanted to start with a pure techie tip. So, here I am going to show how to install a free SSL certificate for a WordPress website. Recently we have installed a free SSL certificate for a client’s website. There are many free SSL certificate providers, but we are going to use here the LetsEncrypt.org service.

But why it is necessary to install a free SSL certificate? Well, sometimes you may finish using your free SSL certificate provided by your hosting provider and to renew it you have to pay an amount of around 8 to 10 dollars. Especially those who use NameCheap as a hosting service provider face this situation often because NameCheap provides 50 free Positive SSL certificates for the first year only.

When your SSL certificate is over your website starts to show this monotonous Not secure status in your browser address bar and also starts showing your connection is not private.

Obviously, these are very negative messages to the visitors of the brand image of your website.

But if you don’t want to pay for a new SSL certificate for another year then free SSL certificates provider is the lifesaver. Let’s Encrypt is a popular one but their free SSL certificate is valid for 3 months. So after 3 months, you have to renew the certificate again.

Anyway, we want to make the process easy for you. So whatever the reason is, let’s not waste more time and directly jump into the installation process. The process is not so complex. Let’s see how to do it very quickly.

1. First, you have to install and activate a plugin called WP encryption. So, log in to your WordPress Dashboard > Go to Plugins > Add new > then search using the keyword ‘letsencrypt’. You will find the desired plugin as shown below:

2. Now click on Allow and Continue:

3. Select the free plan:

4. Now enter your email address, check all the four options then click Generate SSL certificate:

5. Now we have to complete any one of two challenges. Let’s finish the HTTP Challenges.

6. According to HTTP Challenges, we need to upload the two files into the right location using the cPanel panel or the FTP:

7. After successfully verifying the Verification File links, click on the Verify HTTP Challenges button. If the verification is successful then it will redirect to this page shown below which will say congrats SSL certificate has been successfully generated:

8. Now you just need to download the SSL certificate files and follow as the image shows. So according to the instruction I have to go to the security area of the cPanel and select the option SSL/TLS:

9. Then click on the option Manage SSL sites:

10. Select the desired domain:

11. Copy and paste the content of the three files into these three fields respectively:

12. Then click on the install certificate button:

13. You will get a message ‘SSL host successfully install’:

Now finally go back to the WordPress admin, and click on the Enable HTTPS Now button after few minutes.

Great! SSL certificate installation process is done, but you have to wait for a while for the server to update the changes.