ssl

WebPageTest Error With HTTPS / HTTP2 Enabled Site

Last updated on by topcat

Symptoms

One situation I ran into when I migrated 1keydata.com to HTTPS with HTTP2 enabled was that I had an issue with the page load speed testing tools WebPageTest and GTMetrix. On both tools, https://www.1keydata.com/ failed to load, yet when I visit the site using a browser, the website loaded up fine. This is the first time I have seen a difference in behavior between these types of testing tools and a browser. Given the highly unusual nature of this difference, I decided to look into the issue further. Below is what the test result page on WebPageTest looked like:

WebPageTest Error Result Page

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Convert From HTTP to HTTPS Using CloudFlare SSL

Last updated on by topcat

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:

  • Canonical URL
  • Internal links
  • CSS
  • Javascript
  • Images
  • External CSS resources such as Google fonts

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.

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