Redirects from non-secure site to secure site

[allieb]

I will be making a second website to sell professional education materials.
Our current website is set up with SSL to sell downloads (Using the Easy Digital Downloads plugin).

I was told by our hosting company support that I could save considerable money by redirecting customers (who are ready to purchase) from the new website to our first one. So, instead of buying a new SSL & necessary dedicated IP for the new website, I would simply set up a redirect to the first website, for the HTTPS to be available when customers enter name, email and purchase information.

Is this easy to do or complicated?

I appreciate your help!

http://www.navigatdivorceguide.com

[Christoph]

Hi,

while this can technically be done, it would not seem trustworthy or professional to me as a customer.
Shop at Amazon but checkout at Ebay... Seems fishy...

SSL certificates are cheap (namecheap.com, gogetssl.com...) or free (startssl.com right now and letsencrypt.com is going into public beta in a couple of weeks), installing them on a website is rather straightforward and the technology to use multiple SSL certificates on one dedicated IP exists for over a decade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication).

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https://www.christophherr.com | Genesis Customizations | Buy me a coffee

[eddie]

What he said. Cheap and easy. I'm actually on the beta program for letsencrypt.org and plan on testing next weekend. It is a different approach, but one that I appreciate as a tinfoil hat wearing kind of guy.

As for the redirect question. Yes, it is easy. I currently redirect all my shorturl traffic to my primary domain without issue. Only a couple of lines if on the same host.

[allieb]

Very interesting!

My hosting company tells me I have to have a separate dedicated IP for each domain with an SSL certificate.
The second website is now an add-on to the first one.
Are you saying that I could purchase an SSL certificate from namecheap.com and just do it?

What is "short url traffic"? (I know what short url is - from bitly.com, correct?)

thanks!

[eddie]

Honestly, that depends on how they have it configured and what access you have. Pretty easy to do it yourself with a hosted environment that you have to ssh. In a *nix environment, you create a CSR, configure your available-sites in Apache, point it to your cert and you are rocking with a secure site. Yes, I oversimplified that, but there are a ton of tutorials out there that will walk you through it.

As for the redirect method, simply create a .htaccess file. I wouldn't suggest it for a secure shopping experience, though.

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