Do I really need SSL on my art website?

[dandypandys]

Any tech-savvy website people out there? I am wondering if I need to figure out how to get SSL certificate on my wee art website since it now keeps saying it is not secure, and some visitors have sent me concerned emails. Which probably is not so professional looking for me. Also, I have two other wordpress sites here, one of which we might sell t-shirts from, so might have a shop one day.
I looked into it with my host, asmallorange, but they charge 100 bucks or something because there are multiple sites, anyway it's not cheap. I was watching some YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJJLjxVQEfY and he and other people are saying there's a free way to get it with Cloudflare, and I'm wondering if this is legitimate? Does anyone have any advice for me?
Thanks!
 

[dandarc]

The process is fairly straightforward:

1. Obtain certificate
2. Configure your server so the certificate obtained in step 1 is served when people access your website
3. (technically optional, although you really should do this). Configure your server to automatically redirect from HTTP to HTTPS

The best folks to contact if you don't know how to do this is whoever is hosting website. The general process is pretty much the same everywhere, but exactly how you accomplish it on your specific servers varies.

[miked]

I use Let's Encrypt to provide certs for the websites I host. It's free, but you'll need to wade through some doc/tutorials and need access to a terminal on your servers. I self host, so not a problem, not sure what your situation is.

[dandypandys]

so it is sounding like I don't have to pay my host the $ for:

" SSL Certificate  Protect your visitor's data on web forms, e-commerce sites, secure customer areas, and more with an SSL Certificate expertly installed by A Small Orange. We provide an industry leading grade A 2048 bit encryption certificate. This is a one year PositiveSSL Certificate" (1-year) $39.95 one time

or

"Wildcard SSL certificates save you time and money by consolidating an entire domain with multiple subdomains or multiple servers onto a single SSL certificate." (1-year) $149.00 USD One Time

not that I know what the difference is between these- learning

[bacchi]

so it is sounding like I don't have to pay my host the $ for:

" SSL Certificate  Protect your visitor's data on web forms, e-commerce sites, secure customer areas, and more with an SSL Certificate expertly installed by A Small Orange. We provide an industry leading grade A 2048 bit encryption certificate. This is a one year PositiveSSL Certificate" (1-year) $39.95 one time

or

"Wildcard SSL certificates save you time and money by consolidating an entire domain with multiple subdomains or multiple servers onto a single SSL certificate." (1-year) $149.00 USD One Time

not that I know what the difference is between these- learning

Ha, that's lame that they charge more for a wildcard.

When the cert is created, you specify the hostname. For example, blog.dandypandys.com. If you also have a shop, it might be shop.dandypandys.com. You'd need 2 certs in this case, one for each subdomain (where dandypandys.com is your domain and blog and shop are the subdomains).

A wildcard can accept any subdomain. It would, in this case, be *.dandypandys.com, where the '*' can be anything. You can have blog.dandypandys.com and shop.dandypandys.com and archive.dandypandys.com and etc. all using the same certificate.

[dandypandys]

so if I went with my host, as far as I can tell, I would be paying them an extra 149 a year- because I have 2 sub-domains.
eugh

[dandarc]

If you only have 3 domains (main domain + 2 subdomains), then 3x option 1 is cheaper.

[dandypandys]

If you only have 3 domains (main domain + 2 subdomains), then 3x option 1 is cheaper.

oh yeah! haha. Maybe I should just get them to do it, the other way that was on that youtube I posted seemed like a bunch of steps- which is fine- but if something went wrong, I would have no idea how to fix it.

[bacchi]

If you only have 3 domains (main domain + 2 subdomains), then 3x option 1 is cheaper.

oh yeah! haha. Maybe I should just get them to do it, the other way that was on that youtube I posted seemed like a bunch of steps- which is fine- but if something went wrong, I would have no idea how to fix it.

If you're looking at cloudflare, and something went wrong, you could just turn it off and you're back to where you started (after a ~24 hour delay). Cloudflare has a free level that might work for you. https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/

Same with https://letsencrypt.org. After the cert is installed, you could ask your host to remove it at any time so there's little downside.

It's worth a try and you'd save yourself some money.

[dandypandys]

If you only have 3 domains (main domain + 2 subdomains), then 3x option 1 is cheaper.

oh yeah! haha. Maybe I should just get them to do it, the other way that was on that youtube I posted seemed like a bunch of steps- which is fine- but if something went wrong, I would have no idea how to fix it.

If you're looking at cloudflare, and something went wrong, you could just turn it off and you're back to where you started (after a ~24 hour delay). Cloudflare has a free level that might work for you. https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/

Same with https://letsencrypt.org. After the cert is installed, you could ask your host to remove it at any time so there's little downside.

It's worth a try and you'd save yourself some money.

ah ok, cool. I just needed a bit of assurance to go for it. I am no expert- but can follow directions pretty well- and just needed to know if it was a viable option and not some scam.

[beee]

Cloudflare is legit. I use it on some of my websites.

[dandypandys]

Cloudflare is legit. I use it on some of my websites.

great, ok it will be my weekend job- figuring this out