Setting up SSL Manually via CPanel

Setting up SSL within my personal web properties was long overdue. My hosting does not directly support free SSL certificates via Let’s Encrypt, so I ended up using SSL for Free (ZeroSSL under the hood) to create and verify the certificate.

Creating the certificate was a simple process. You first register an account using your email, create a password, and enter the domain name. I used the file upload method to verify my ownership of the domain, which required me to crack open the file manager in CPanel and upload a text file.

Next you go to the security section of CPanel, select the domain you want to secure and, copy-paste the 3 files provided by ZeroSSL.

In WordPress you update the site domains to https in Settings – General.

Adding the following code to .htaccess redirects visitors from http to https:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
</IfModule>

This certificate is good for 90 days. Let’s Encrypt recommends that you renew the certificates every 60 days, so I will be back to this to renew in a couple of months.

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