Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS – Simplest Baby Step Guide
Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS but Why? How? Is it helps? There are many such questions and those are valid too. So, here in this article we are going to get justified answers of all the above questions.
Before dive into migrating from HTTP to HTTPS, we learn something basics about HTTP & HTTPS.
HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol and HTTPS stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure, the secure version of the HTTP.
HTTP is used for communication on the web (the method used to move data around the Web). HTTPS is a secure communication on the web & usually used on websites to secure e-commerce transactions, such as online banking sites and e-commerce checkout areas.
When a user connects to a website via HTTPS, the website encrypts the current session with a Digital TLS (Transport Layer Security) Certificate.
Ready To Dive:
Let’s start Migrating from Http to Https
There are two ways to get SSL certificate: Paid & Free
Paid SSL certificate you get from your hosting company or from SSL certificate vendor.
Free SSL certificate you get from many free SSL certificate Provider. We recommended Let’s Encrypt.
Install your SSL Certificate
To install your SSL Certificate on your web server depending on what software you are running the steps can vary.
You need to do the SSL Certificate installation on the same server (or with the same private key) that you generated the Certificate Signing Request on. Choose your server type or device below:
- Apache
- cPanel/WHM
- Microsoft IIS 5 and 6
- Microsoft IIS 7
- 4D Webstar 4.x
- BEA Weblogic
- Cisco Secure ACS
- Citrix Secure Gateway
- Courier IMAP
- Plesk
- Ensim Pro
- H-Sphere
- IBM HTTP Server
- Lotus Domino
- Microsoft Exchange 2007
- NetScreen
- F5 Big-IP
- Tomcat
If you are deploying Let’s Encrypt with Certbot you can choose which type of web server you are using on their website & the operating system you are running. They have extensive documentation. You can then pick “advanced” if you want less automation and more control. Here are just a couple quick links to some popular setups.
Update all Hard-coded Links to HTTPS
It is always a best coding practice to use relative URLS, but there will be chances to have hard-coded URL and if you then you will need to do a full sweep on your site & database during an HTTP to HTTPS migration.
Update Custom JS, AJAX Libraries to HTTPS
Like Hard-coded Links you will check for the Custom JS, AJAX Libraries as they are also need to get updated while you’re migrating from http to https.
Take an Example, if you are using Google’s hosted jQuery library then it must be like below [with https]
https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.3/jquery.min.js
Add 301 Redirects to New HTTPS URLs
The most important steps in an HTTP to HTTPS migration is adding 301 redirects. As 301 redirects are a permanent redirect which passes between 90%+ of link juice to the redirected page. So, if you don’t implement 301 redirects you could seriously hamper your SEO rankings & your site’s become bright to drop out of SERPs overnight.
Update your robots.txt File & Sitemaps
As per the On-Page SEO consideration robots.txt & Sitemap is important and it consist of website URLs too. Like Robots.txt has Sitemap.xml url & Sitemap.xml has all website URLs & that might still pointing to HTTP directories or files. So, it’s necessary to update all websites URLs from robots.txt & Sitemap.xml.
You will need to resubmit the HTTPS version of your updated Sitemap.xml in your Google Search Console profile.
Fetch
As websites all URLs get completely changed after migration from HTTP to HTTPS Google need to re-crawl this. In some migrations to HTTPS, it take weeks or more than that for Google re-crawl everything correctly. So, we recommend doing a fetch and crawl on your new HTTPs website, just to get things done a little faster.
Update Your Google Analytics Profile URL
After this all above step, you need to update your Google Analytics Website’s URL. So, for this you need to click into Admin under your account and then your view settings. Then click the URL & change it to HTTPS version.
You Done!!!
We hope this guide help you to migrate from http to https, still if you come across any issue or want to give any suggestions to up please free to contact us. It’s our pleasure to assist you.
