If you manage a website, it is important to offer the maximum degree of security to your users. Switching from HTTP to HTTPS is the first step in making your website secure. It is therefore very important to offer our visitors the most secure HTTPS connection, which encrypts all traffic compared to normal HTTP.
To switch from HTTP to HTTPS you must have a certificate to install on your website, which certifies that you are secure and do not hide pitfalls on your site. For small websites, you can request a free DV certificate with Let’s Encrypt and we’ll tell you how to get it as simple as possible.
There are several free methods to obtain a digital certificate for our website in order to switch to a secure HTTPS connection and we will show you the simplest ways to do it. In fact, using the HTTPS connection, the information exchanged between the browser and the web server and vice versa cannot be intercepted by encrypting the content.
How many types of website certificates are there?
There are three types of certificates:
- DV (Domain Validated) The most widespread and used on websites and is the least expensive because it only certifies the domain.
- OV (Organization Validated) Certifies both the domain and the company and is used to offer greater reliability to users who visit a company’s site. Useful for those who manage sensitive customer data such as credit card numbers, etc.
- EV (Extended Validation) It is the most complete, highest level encryption and recognition of the company directly in the address bar where the name of the company itself will also be shown. Used for banks, large companies, and high-end businesses.
I would say that for normal websites, even with many visits, the DV-type certificate is more than enough. Here’s how to get it for free.
How to get a free certificate for a website (HTTPS)
The certificates issued by Let’s Encrypt are valid for 90 days and you must remember to renew them in time, and once uploaded to your site, a closed padlock will appear in the address bar of the browser to indicate the certificate uploaded and issued by Let’s Encrypt Authority.
certbot
The official Let’s Encrypt tool to request, generate, install, and renew the digital certificate is Certbot which works very well even if it is not super intuitive. In a few clicks, you will request a certificate to apply on your website with all the necessary information that you can find at this address.
SSL For Free
It is the service that I mainly use and by clicking here you will access the page where you can generate and renew Let’s Encrypt certificates. Easy to use and to configure the certificate on your site you can opt for Manual verification by uploading files or Manual with DNS and with the second you will have to add a DNS record.
No SSL
Zero SSL offers a similar solution to SSL For Free whereby accessing the site in the Online tools section, on Start under the heading FREE SSL Certificate Wizard it will allow you to obtain a valid free DV certificate from Let’s Encrypt and install it on the website.
Get HTTPS for free!
Get HTTPS for free allows you to obtain the Let’s Encrypt digital certificate it is not very simple but thanks to the wizard, we will get all the commands to generate it from Linux. We will have to open the terminal and type some commands, present in the section how do I generate this? To validate the site you will need to run a Python command.
