HTTPS Migration Steps

After obtaining your SSL certificates and installing them on your web hosting account, the next set is to complete the HTTPS migration. Depending on the method you decide, there are a different series of steps.

Cloudflare

The steps to complete your HTTPS migration on Cloudflare are:

Go the Crypto section and turn On “Always Use HTTPS”

Note since Cloudflare also does caching it will take a while for everything to migrate over before doing the tests below.

Media Temple

The steps to complete your HTTPS migration at Media Tempe are:

- Change HTACCESS file to have this code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://domain.com%{REQUEST_URI} [L,NE,R=301]

Additional HTTPS Migration Steps

Here are some things to change:

Google Search Console
- Add Properties for each version of your website using HTTPS
  - https://domain.com
  - https://www.domain.com
Google Analytics
- In Administration Property Settings, change Default URL to HTTPS
WordPress
- If not using Cloudflare, go to Settings –> General and change both URL to use HTTPS
ad code blocks not use HTTPS
Google Analytics code blocks not using HTTPS
social media embeds not using HTTPS
update any 301 redirects in HTACCESS
update robots.txt
generate new sitemap using HTTPS
add note in Google Analytics with date of change
Test at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

Testing HTTPS Migration

Here are some tests to do after enabling HTTPS on your website:

Check the “secure” indicator is in your web browser
If doesn’t show, in Chrome open Developer Tools (F12) and go to Security tab to look for issues
Test redirection by going to:
- http://domain.com
- http://www.domain.com
- https://www.domain.com
Manually check by clicking internal links
test using Screaming Frog
- enter only domain name without http, https or www
- look for status code not 200
  - If 301, look where inlink from and change the source code to use HTTPS
test using Website Auditor
- confirm only scanning domain name without http, https or www
  - review resources with 4xx status code
  - review pages with 301 redirects
  - review HTTPS pages with mixed content issues
- change source code to use HTTPS