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May 2016 Website Journey – changing PeasOnToast from being http to become a secure https website and registering a new domain name
The trouble was, I’d heard conflicting reports – some people said it was a lot of hassle to set up, having to redirect all your posts from the http domain to https. Others said it was a good idea to change to https as it reaps the rewards of improved SEO favour and increased visitor trust.
I decided to go ahead and make the switch. After all, I’ve managed to format this website just by learning each step from scratch, so I reckoned I could work out what to do for the SSL certificate too.
Having now made the switch, I’m happy to tell you that it wasn’t too difficult or that much of a hassle to set up and change to an https website.
At the same time, I also registered a new domain at NameCheap to find out the process of adding it to my current web host.
1. Transferring to a secure https website with an ssl certificate
The main benefit of having an https website is that it now has increased, encrypted security which means increased visitor interaction and trust. Oh, and did I mention that Google also gives it an (albeit, small) ranking boost?
One of the downsides of having an https website is that sometimes there’ll be a marginal slowness in speed due to extra communication between servers.
There’s also the possibility of errors occurring after the transfer, due to the amount of information being moved across to the new https domain. But if you follow good https transfer steps, it should be ok.
Hey, I managed it, so it’s obviously not that difficult if a beginner can make it work!
2. Registering a new domain and linking it to your web hosting package
The FastComet web hosting package that I use is “e-commerce“. It’s just a few £s a month, but allows me to include an unlimited number of domains, as well as being a full feature hosting package – yes, I still have to buy the domains, but I don’t have to pay anything to have the domains hosted.
I bought the domain from NameCheap.com, as they sold it for a low price and the renewal price was low too.
I experienced their Live Chat first hand, as I had a few questions whilst buying the domain. I was impressed – the Live Chat was knowledgeable and helpful, and I liked their user-friendly control panel to manage the domain settings.
3. Summary
What’s been learned?
- weigh up the pros and cons of making changes to your website – your website may still benefit from the change even if others’ didn’t
- it’s not difficult to make your website secure with https, especially as help is usually to hand (either from your web hosting tech team or by searching the forums for answers)
- for a few £s each month, it’s worth paying for a web hosting package that includes unlimited domain hosting.
Honest stats – May 2016
Monthly website traffic continued to increase to reach a total of just under 2,200 visitors/page views by the end of May. With subscribers continuing to increase too, it’s been an encouraging month. Thanks to everybody for visiting here 🙂
So, that’s my update for May 2016, covering how I changed PeasOnToast to an https website and registered a new domain name.
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