Using your SSL Certificate

Welcome to the Freeola Internet customer support pages. This guide is designed to help with setting up your SSL webpages and explain further what you can actually do with SSL. For more internet help topics please visit our main Support Page.

You must have already purchased an SSL certificate from Freeola in order to follow this guide.

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, which is a method of encrypting and decrypting information between a web browser and server to ensure data cannot be read by any third parties. This is necessary for handling credit card data, usernames, passwords, and sometimes even e-mail and FTP. Freeola can now give you the opportunity to secure your webpages with SSL.

If you have purchased SSL then you will need to log into your FTP web space for your VIP account as usual by opening an FTP client such as Filezilla.

Once you have opened your FTP client, enter your FTP details and connect. You should then see a new folder within your webspace called htdocs_secure. This is where your secure files must go. Upload an example page if you wish and visit https://yourdomain.com/yourpage.html. You should notice your browser showing a padlock icon, or something similar, to indicate you are on a secure connection.

Whether you have purchased SSL for your main domain name or a subdomain you will need to ensure you visit the site via https:// rather than http://.

For example:

• https://shop.example.com

• https://example.com

If you visit your site address without the https:// you will see the contents of the htdocs folder rather than "htdocs_secure", whether there is anything in it or not.

Congratulations, you can now upload your secure files to htdocs_secure which will only be accessible over the SSL encrypted connection.

With your SSL connection you will be able to run online shops and take credit card payments whilst giving your customers the piece of mind that their details are being sent via a secure connection.

You can also use SSL to secure your log-in pages and other customer information if you so choose to do. With SSL you can be guaranteed no one intercepting the transmission of data between your customers and you will be able to actually see the data.