The SSL certificate allows your website to be secure so your viewers feel safe when viewing your website and trust your website is safe.
Sometimes your website may be showing as Not Secure if you haven't enabled the SSL certificate which can be off-putting for your website viewers as your site will be showing as insecure of for some browsers they won't be able to get to your website. It is important to enable the SSL certificate and highly recommend doing so.
How to enable SSL
All Rocketspark websites have an SSL option available for free. View our guide here on how to enable SSL.
We recommend that all websites are secured over SSL.
About SSL
A website can get greater security through what programmers call HTTPS or SSL certificate (technically, these are two different things, but they’re closely related).
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a security protocol for establishing an encrypted link between your web browser and a server. Basically, it provides a secure method for communicating information over the internet.
An SSL certificate can be set up on a website to ensure that confidential information such as credit card numbers and login information is less vulnerable to being intercepted. When a site is protected.
On a Rocketspark website, there are two main areas where confidential information is entered.
- Logging into your Dashboard is covered by Rocketspark’s own SSL certificate
- Credit card payment information for online shop clients is entered directly into the payment gateway’s own system which has its own security
Customer names and addresses or the Rocketspark contact form block are not covered by the above security measures so if you are concerned about the security of customer information submitted via these measures you can enable SSL using Rocketspark's Domain Manager.
Apart from keeping your customer's information secure other advantages of using SSL are that web browsers often show a green secure badge when browsing your website. This can help build trust and confidence with your visitors.
Google also uses SSL as a ranking factor, which may affect your website's position in Google search results.
Are credit card payments secure?
Yes! While out of the box the online shop itself is not secured by an SSL certificate (unless enabled), the page where your customers enter in their credit card details is always secure (HTTPS). So you can rest assured that customers’ credit card details are always protected.
But I really want to make the whole website secure with an HTTPS address. Can I?
Yes, and for a free through the Rocketspark Domain Manager. Rocketspark has partnered with Let's Encrypt, a not-for-profit organisation, to supply our SSL certificates. This is a straightforward process and can be done by following our guide on how to enable SSL on Rocketspark websites.
Uh-oh, security errors/warnings appear when accessing my website. What’s wrong?
This usually happens when a link to your website has been incorrectly written as “https” when it should just be “http”. This prompts an error message or warning to appear when the user clicks the link. It may look alarming but don’t worry—it’s an easy fix.
To correct this from happening you can enable SSL on your Rocketspark website. This is free of charge and can be done on domains used with your Rocketspark website. For steps on how to do this follow our guide on how to enable SSL on your website. Alternatively update the link pointing to your website to be http:// if this is possible, but enabling SSL is the far better option here.