SSL Certificates

SSL Certificates provide a secure connection between your website and a visitor to your website.

SSL Certificates need to be signed by a recognised authority such as Globasign or AlphaSSL in order to seamlessly move from non-ssl pages to ssl encrypted pages

On a secured SSL page, the browser will let you know that the page is SSL encrypted. For example, on Firefox there is a little 'lock' icon present.

You can view the contents and validity of a certificate if you are putting your trust in a certain website, i.e. submitting credit card details. This can normally be achieved by (double) clicking the above 'lock' icon.

If the SSL certificate is self-signed, has not been installed correctly or indeed not present, connecting to the 'secure' part of the website will yield a hefty set of warnings provided by the web browser that the site is not secure and you should avoid putting critical information into the site.

Static IP

SSL certificates require an individual static IP to secure a website. This is one of the primary reasons to have a static IP address.

Installation

SSL Certificates and static IPs purchased via 3DPixel.net will be installed by 3DPixel.net staff. You need to tell us which domain you would like to secure. Please note: there is a difference between securing www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com and each domain you wish to secure requires a unique SSL certificate and static IP address.

As, more than likely, your site will currently be on a shared IP address, there will be a period of downtime for your site as the IP address is updated from shared to static. This is standard DNS propagation and is usually 24 hours. Within reason, you can let us know when you would like this change to be made (i.e. not at 4am on a Sunday morning).

Access

SSL secured sites are accessed by the https protocol versus the http protocol. Thus, where your site would normally be accessed via http://yoursite.com it is https://yoursite.com.

From within plesk, and your FTP file structure you have both a httpdocs and httpsdocs directory. Both can be populated at the same time allowing you to run both non-SSL and SSL content on your site at the same time, switching to SSL and back simply by prefixing http and https to your website links respectively.

Cost

VIa 3DPixel.net, SSL certificates cost £30 plus vat per year. Static IP addresses cost £15 plus vat per year.