SSL Certificate Best Practices: The Complete Checklist

An SSL/TLS certificate encrypts the connection between your website and its visitors. Without it, all data — including passwords, personal information, and payment details — is transmitted in plain text. Here is everything you need to know about SSL best practices.

1. Always use HTTPS

Every website should use HTTPS, not just e-commerce sites. Google uses HTTPS as a ranking signal, and browsers mark HTTP sites as "Not Secure." Use our SSL Checker to verify your setup.

2. Set up HTTP to HTTPS redirect

Having a certificate is not enough — you must redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS. Without this, visitors who type your domain without "https://" will browse insecurely.

# Nginx
server {
    listen 80;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

# Apache .htaccess
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

3. Enable HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security)

HSTS tells browsers to always use HTTPS for your domain, preventing SSL stripping attacks. Add this header to your HTTPS responses:

Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains

4. Use TLS 1.2 or higher only

TLS 1.0 and 1.1 have known vulnerabilities and are deprecated by all major browsers. Configure your server to only accept TLS 1.2 and 1.3.

5. Disable weak cipher suites

Remove support for RC4, 3DES, EXPORT, and NULL cipher suites. Use ECDHE key exchange with AES-GCM for the strongest security.

6. Set up auto-renewal

Let's Encrypt certificates expire every 90 days. Set up automatic renewal to avoid downtime:

sudo certbot renew --dry-run  # Test renewal
sudo crontab -e
# Add: 0 3 * * * certbot renew --quiet

7. Monitor certificate expiry

Create a free account on WebCheckApp to monitor your SSL certificate and get alerted 30 days before expiry.