While moving from HTTP to HTTPS is a growing trend, there may be a time when you want to convert HTTPS to HTTP. For us, the main driver was page load time. After we migrated to HTTPS, the average page load time went up substantially, thus negatively impacting user experience. We tried several methods to improve page load time, but found little success. As a result, we decided reverting to HTTP was the best way to proceed.
I recently converted a website from HTTP to HTTPS using CloudFlare’s Universal SSL, which is free and does not require installation on the server, two factors that had prevented me from doing this previously. Here are the steps I took to convert my website to HTTPS:
1. Update all internal links to point to the HTTPS version of the asset. This includes the following:
Depending on how complex your website is, this effort could range from a few minutes (if you have a very small website) to a big project that takes several months (if you are a large enterprise). However, if you belong to the latter category or if you are doing ecommerce, it is a good idea to go with one of the commercial SSL certificates rather than getting SSL through CloudFlare.