Title: What can you tell me about HTTPS? Last modified: August 30, 2016 --- # What can you tell me about HTTPS? * [Simast](https://wordpress.org/support/users/simast/) * (@simast) * [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/what-can-you-tell-me-about-https/) * Hi Fellow WordPressors * I’ve just installed an SSL certificate on my website.. now what? * I have a bunch of questions which im struggling to answer with Google. * 1. Do crawlers now see 2 websites? (will this affect my ranking negatively). 2. Should I 301 redirect from my HTTP to HTTPS versions and if I do this will I have to maintain this certificate now until the end of time? * I was offered a free 1 year SSL certificate with my hosting plan, this combined with a few friends informing me they were getting “this site might be stealing info” warnings when they accidentally typed https:// – which spurred me into installing my free certificate. Its only been a few hours – would I be better just un-installing it to make everything simpler. My website is just a simple photography page – it takes no transactions. * Any pointers would really help. Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total) * Moderator [Jan Dembowski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jdembowski/) * (@jdembowski) * Forum Moderator and Brute Squad * [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/what-can-you-tell-me-about-https/#post-6650794) * > 1. Do crawlers now see 2 websites? (will this affect my ranking negatively). * If you 301 redirect the http to the https URL then no. * > 2. Should I 301 redirect from my HTTP to HTTPS versions and if I do this will > I have to maintain this certificate now until the end of time? * See above reply. 😉 Yes, if you have SSL working properly on your site then you should 301 redirect the non-encrypted URL request to the HTTPS one. * There are a lot of ways to enforce HTTPS. Start with this one article. * [https://codex.wordpress.org/Administration_Over_SSL](https://codex.wordpress.org/Administration_Over_SSL) * And read up on HTTPS. If your site is ready then the cut over is easy. If you’re not ready then you could lock yourself out accidentally. * Thread Starter [Simast](https://wordpress.org/support/users/simast/) * (@simast) * [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/what-can-you-tell-me-about-https/#post-6650795) * Is SSL really needed on what is essentially my simple blog site, am I making my life more difficult for marginal SEO gains. * Would I just be best removing the certificate? * Moderator [Jan Dembowski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jdembowski/) * (@jdembowski) * Forum Moderator and Brute Squad * [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/what-can-you-tell-me-about-https/#post-6650805) * While there has been some talk about encrypting your site to get better _Magic Search Engine Results_™ it really is about your content. Just using https isn’t going to do anything for that. * If you understand all of the implications of using https then sure, go for it. If you are wondering what those implications are (and that’s not a bad thing) then you may want to skip https for now and stick to a non-encrypted site. * _*Puts on tin foil hat*_ * I only use https on my own site but it’s only because it’s easy for me to do and I can troubleshoot any problems myself. I don’t do it for any search engine reasons. I just like having a reasonable expectation that my traffic is encrypted between my server and any web browsers making requests to my site. * Thread Starter [Simast](https://wordpress.org/support/users/simast/) * (@simast) * [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/what-can-you-tell-me-about-https/#post-6650880) * Can I use my robot.txt file to stop crawling of the https versions of my pages and thus stopping Google from assuming I have duplicate content? * If I can use this method it means I don’t have to 301 redirect and change all my internal links. * [TheUnknownAnonymous](https://wordpress.org/support/users/theunknownanonymous/) * (@theunknownanonymous) * [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/what-can-you-tell-me-about-https/#post-6650995) * Well… with 301 redirect, http no longer exist (sort of) so no worries about duplicate content. The hardest part is making wordpress work with ssl – once thats done your set! Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total) The topic ‘What can you tell me about HTTPS?’ is closed to new replies. ## Tags * [ssl certificate](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/ssl-certificate/) * In: [Everything else WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/miscellaneous/) * 5 replies * 3 participants * Last reply from: [TheUnknownAnonymous](https://wordpress.org/support/users/theunknownanonymous/) * Last activity: [10 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/what-can-you-tell-me-about-https/#post-6650995) * Status: not resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics