Owning a website for your business has become the need of the hour for many small scale businesses. It allows you to increase your reach, target more audience and scale your products globally. Therefore having a well functioning website in order to fulfill these goals is mandatory.
It’s important to build your website based on trust and security that your customer’s can rely on. This enables a positive word of mouth review by people who visit your website.
An insecure website discourages visitors from interacting with your website as they start having concerns about your website breaching their security and trust. Thankfully due to today’s digital age, it’s easy to find solutions for any problem as they are easily available on the Internet.
Therefore in keeping with this gesture of goodwill, today we will show you how to fix errors that occur when your website is not well secured.
Having a site not secure error can seriously hamper your business if you don’t nip it in the bud as soon as possible. We will be listing a few important reasons as to why these errors occur and also help you fix them alongside if you are facing any of the aforementioned problems.
Checking if your site has an SSL certificate:
First and foremost it’s important for your site to have an SSL certificate. Google automatically displays a “Site is not secure” popup if your site doesn’t have one. This is because an SSL certificate provides end to end encryption between the server and website due to which hacker cannot eavesdrop on the data that is being transferred.
To check whether your site has an SSL certificate we must perform a pre-check. If your site URL is www.example.com, add the words “https://” before the URL and type it in the browser address bar as https://www.example.com. If a green padlock symbol is visible, then you’re good to go as your site already has an SSL certificate installed. If not, then it’s vital for you to purchase an SSL certificate. If you already have an SSL certificate installed, you can skip thee next two steps.
Backing Up Your Website:
Before proceeding any further, we would recommend taking a backup of your website so that you can easily revert back to your earlier website in case you encounter some irreversible errors. You can use the Blog Vault plugin to help you with this task.
Installing The SSL Certificate:
Installing an SSL certificate can be scary for newbies if you’re not sure of the steps that you should take. However, there are plugins available that can help ease some load off your back. First and foremost, you must choose the correct certificate depending upon your needs and your website.
Next you need to install the certificate correctly on to your website. There are many resources out there that will help guide you through this process. Buying an SSL certificate from well known brands would be best option.
Lastly you should verify your SSL certificate to ensure that it has been correctly installed. An incorrectly installed SSL certificate won’t do you any good as it won’t be able to encrypt any data.
Now that we have installed the certificate, we should check if our problem has been solved. If yes, Congratulations!!! You’re good to go. If not, don’t fret. We still have some additional tips for you.
Fix NET::ERR_CERT_INVALID Error:
This error message is usually displayed due to three main reasons:
- The SSL certificate installed on your website might have been issued to a different domain or subdomain.
- The browser that you use doesn’t recognize the certificate issuing authority.
- Your certificate has expired.
You can try contacting your certificate provider or try manually re-installing it to fix the above problems.
Fix Mixed Content Errors:
Since HTTP and HTTPS are two completely different protocols it is difficult for them to run simultaneously. Mixed content errors occur source files such as images, videos, stylesheets are still being loaded using the HTTP protocol.
In such cases, the green padlock symbol will not be visible in the address bar. However luckily there’s a simple fix available to help sort out such errors. You can use plugins such as Really Simple SSL to help you out with this issue. Upon successful activation, you simply need to visit Settings >> SSLpage to review your plugin settings.
Although this is considered an easy fix, we will recommend manually fixing this error for better site performance. For this you will have to manually change every “HTTP://” URL to “HTTPs://” so as to allow your SSL certificate to function smoothly.
You will also need to replace all internal links as mentioned above in order to completely encrypt your data. You can install plugins such as Better Search Replace to help you assist with this task. However you still have to manually change the URL every time even though you are using a plugin.
Following the above steps will surely help you resolve your “Site Not Secure” error. Understanding basic website security is a must for every business owner. This is because you can have the basic knowledge to help you diagnose issues with your website.
Knowing what’s wrong with your website enables you to take swift and appropriate action in order to safeguard your website. And nowadays, website security is a priority for every business as it’s a benchmark of your company’s testament to protecting your client’s data.
Trust goes a long way in growing a business as it is the foundation stone for scaling your products to a larger audience. Google has stated that it will give a higher priority to websites with an SSL certificate and it never hurts to have your website get a better search indexing.
Properly following the above mentioned steps will help fix the errors without causing any damage to your website which is equally as important. We hope that this article helped you diagnose your problem and rectify it or provide you with the knowledge to fix it if it ever occurs in the near future.
If you want more security to your website then feel very free to contact us. We are glad to help you protect your website by increasing security.
