5 pitfalls of using a free SSL on WordPress

by

Adam Harkus
,
5 pitfalls of a free SSL on Wordpress - The Blogging Musician. adamharkus.com. By Sean MacEntee

I recently took the plunge to move my site https using a free SSL provided by my hosted company.  Here’s 5 pitfalls I encountered in doing so.

1. Reduced Google AdSense revenue

Yes, I got a boost in traffic, but what good is that when revenue is down?

2. A lower Google PageSpeed Insights score

Maybe it was the redirect from http to https, but my Google Page Speed Insights  score took a nose-dive on both mobile and desktop the minute I went over to https. As Google themselves point out, page speed plays a big part in Google ranking, it’s not just an inferior user experience.

3. Not Fully compatible with Jetpack for WordPress

Your sight will be tainted with a red exclamation make when you log in to WordPress.com That’s right, Jetpack can’t communicate properly with a shared SSL. Your posts will be missing so you’ll get weird connectivity messages when posting comments etc. Who knows what else is broken.

4. Publicize

All of your Social networks used to be linked into your WordPress account and updated automatically, telling the world of your shiny new posts. Well, that doesn’t work anymore either, as they can’t connect. Manual posting it is then.

5. WordPress Followers

You’ve spent months or years building up a loyal band of WordPress followers.  Jetpack used to notify each and every one of them every time you published.  Now it’s broken so they’ll never know.

Of course everything can be fixed IF you go for the paid SSL option, which is of course what the hosting companies want you to do.  For me and my blog though, I’ve gone back to good old http. I don’t hold sensitive info so it wasn’t necessary to go https in the first place.

Lesson learned! If you don’t need to go to https….. DON’T!

Oh, and Welcome Back!

P.s.  We’re still accepting guest articles @ https://adamharkus.com/guest-bloggerscontributers-wanted/ 

Comments

8 responses to “5 pitfalls of using a free SSL on WordPress”

  1. Adam Harkus avatar
    Adam Harkus

    Hmmm. It appears the issue was down to SiteLock on Bluehost….. SSL will not configure properly unless Sitelock in disabled… SSL Works fine now https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=adamharkus.com&hideResults=on

    Reply
  2. Adam avatar
    Adam

    You could not be more wrong.

    Reply
    1. Adam Harkus avatar
      Adam Harkus

      Misconfigured SSL, thanks to Bluehost.

      Reply
  3. Karl Austin avatar
    Karl Austin

    Sounds like someone is feeding you BS, you’re not on a shared SSL.

    Reply
  4. Adam Harkus avatar
    Adam Harkus

    Just personal experience. Bluehost and Jetpack themselves confirmed that some of their API aren’t compatible with a shared SSL. It would work fine on a paid plan though. Further down the line I could be forced in a non-free SSL but we aren’t there yet.

    Reply
  5. Adam Harkus avatar
    Adam Harkus

    In the end used the free bluehost SSL without a redirect back to http: This means my old https links still work and ranking doesn’t suffer, but it also means Jetpack still works on http.

    Reply
  6. avatar
    Anonymous

    Try https://letsencrypt.org it’s a free commercial SSL option

    Reply
  7. JM avatar
    JM

    Are you trolling? Your post contains so much misinformation and sounds like you just have services misconfigured.

    Btw, good luck when Google Chrome 62 is released.

    Reply

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