Forcing HTTPS Connections To WordPress
TL;DR – If you host at HELIX, We’re already doing this for you automatically. It just works. Go put your feet up and design something cool.
There are a few common, popular ways to force https (encrypted) connections to your WordPress site that almost everyone uses. There are tutorials everywhere. Forget them. There’s one best way.
First, lets work under the assumption that in 2019 this is just what we do. There’s no choice. Because Google has pretty much decided this issue for us, and since Lets Encrypt certs are free and easy to use, what’s the reasoning behind not encrypting every page? Let me answer. There is none, so lets just do it.
If you have a reasonably competent WordPress focused host – like HELIX – your host should be aggressively caching for you. Actual caching. At the server/network level. Not with plug-in based file caching that you have to set up. If your host is running a dedicated caching layer in front of your site, then that caching engine should be smart enough to not allow non-encrypted connections to your WordPress site. Doesn’t matter what your host calls its caching feature (its Varnish – everyone knows it). Regardless of the fancy name, it should be smart enough to redirect all traffic to the https version of your pages.
If you want to know the best way to force https connections to your WordPress site, the answer is to host with HELIX because we do it for you. We configure our caching layer to intercept all http requests and automatically redirect them to the https version. If you really care, we do it with 301 redirects. No plugins. No editing wp-config or htaccess. No tutorial needed. It just works in the background.
Any questions?
