What is SSL? Types of it? How to have it?

Whenever you are visiting a good website, if you look at the address bar you most probably see a little green lock. (or grey depending on your browser). In simple words, that lock is SSL.

What is it?

SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. This was designed by Netscape company in 1996. SSL is in charge of encrypting online data. So, because of the importance of all online data, SSL encrypts the data to make it harder for hackers to read them in case of attacking. When a website has the SSL lock beside their domain on the address bar, It means that the website is trusted and safer to browse on. If a website doesn’t have this certificate, the browser will show it as an untrusted website.

How to have it?

In order to have SSL, you have to buy the certificate for it. There are companies like us that provide this service for you. After getting the certificate you have to add it to your domain, You can do this through the control panel of your website. We explained the installation and the registration fully in the “How to order an SSL Certification“. After the installation, if you type in your website address like this: https://example.com you will see the green lock. But if you type it with http instead of https, It won’t show the green lock. If you want the browsers to be able to show your website with both http and https, follow these steps:

1. Go to the file manager of your host.
2. Go to the .htaccess file. (this file might be hidden by default so go to the setting and check the “show the hidden files” option.
3. Paste these to .htaccess file and press save.

 RewriteEngine On
 RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off 
 RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]   

Types of it:

There are different types of SSL certificate:

• Domain Validation (DV): For this, you should prove that you are the owner of this domain. An email will be sent to you and all you have to do is to respond to it.
• Organization Validation (OV): There should be a registered company for that domain and you have to send your company’s documentation to the SSL provider.
• Extended Validation (EV): This type is like OV but costs more and gives more credit o your company. Also, the name of your company will be shown beside the lock.

All three types of SSL can be multi-domain or wildcard:

• Multi-Domain: For a specific number of domains with the same IP address. (All websites located on the same server)
• Wildcard: when you get this, it will also support all of the subdomains of your domain.

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