How do I add Simple SSL to my site?

Updated on October 23rd, 2020

Note

This help document outlines the steps necessary to install our free Simple SSL. If you need to install a third-party SSL certificate, please head on over to this help article: How do I install a third-party SSL certificate?

On the Overview tab of the site's dashboard, click Enable SSL

An initial DNS check for each domain in the Domains list will be run automatically.

Select the domain(s) you'd like to secure

You can select any or all of the domains that appear in the site’s Domains list on the Overview tab of the site’s Flywheel dashboard to be included in the certificate.

Keep in mind that every domain selected will need to be pointed properly to the Flywheel site via A record or CNAME or else Simple SSL installation will fail. For more information on setting up DNS, check out this help article: How do I set up my DNS?

You can see the DNS status of each domain on the domain selection screen:

In the above image, you can see that the top three domains have been verified by our DNS checker as having been correctly pointed to the Flywheel IP, indicated by the green checkmark.

Note

Simple SSL supports up to 50 domain names per certificate. If your site has more than 50 domains please reach out to our friendly Happiness Engineers!

Review any domain(s) that failed the DNS checker

Any domains that are not pointed to Flywheel will show an orange warning icon. Double-check the DNS settings for this domain, and then click the Check DNS Again button in order to retry.

Note

The DNS checker will not always be 100% accurate. For example, if you are pointing DNS via a proxy, like Cloudflare, the Flywheel DNS checker will not be able to confirm that DNS is pointed to Flywheel.

If you are sure that DNS is set up correctly, feel free to ignore this warning.

Once you’re satisfied with the results of the DNS check, click that green Complete SSL Setup button, and our system will get to work installing SSL for you!

Success! Your site is now secure

If Simple SSL successfully validates and installs on your site, you’ll notice a few things change on the Overview tab of your site’s Flywheel Dashboard:

You’ll notice in the top-lefthand corner of the screen a little lock and shield emblem signifying that the Primary domain on the Flywheel site is secured by SSL. You’ll also see in the Domains card a list of domains that are now secured by SSL.

Any domains in the Domains card that were not selected to be secured with Simple SSL will appear in the Insecure domains portion of the Domains card.

Note

It can take 30-60 minutes for your new or newly updated Simple SSL cert to propagate to our global load balancers, after which time the domains in the Secured with SSL list will be able to load over https.

Warning

If you’re pointing your domain through Sucuri, please make sure that the Forward Certificate Validation to Hosting setting is enabled. If it is not, this will prevent Simple SSL from validating.

Error Messages

If Simple SSL fails to validate, you may see one of the following error messages in the Domains card:

This error message indicates that Simple SSL failed to validate because the DNS of one of the selected domains is not properly pointed to the Flywheel IP address. The link, Troubleshoot DNS issues, will take you to a help document which describes the proper way to set up DNS.

Once you’re satisfied that DNS is properly set up for each and every domain you’ve selected to secure, hover over the ellipsis. This will reveal a dropdown menu with the option to Retry SSL Setup. Click that, and Simple SSL will try to validate and install again.

If there’s an issue other than DNS that’s preventing Simple SSL from validating, you’ll see the following error message:

If this is the case, please reach out to our Happiness Engineers, and we’ll dig into the problem for you!

That’s it!

Enjoy your newly secured domains! If you run into any issues, you can reach our team via the Flywheel app!

Note

More information about fully securing your site’s content site can be found in this help guide.

Note

Simple SSL does not yet provide the ability to secure wildcard domains. If you’d like to secure subdomains, you’ll want to do so by adding each subdomain individually to the Simple SSL certificate.

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How do I add Simple SSL to my site?

Note

On the Overview tab of the site's dashboard, click Enable SSL

Select the domain(s) you'd like to secure

Note

Review any domain(s) that failed the DNS checker

Note