Set up CloudFlare’s free Flexible SSL on your WordPress site

I’ve been meaning to play with CloudFlare’s free SSL options for a while, and I finally got around to give it a try. It took me a little while to get to a point where everything worked properly, but I think I finally figured everything out!

If you want to use CloudFlare’s free Flexible SSL on your WordPress site, here are some instructions that could help you!

I set both my site address and WordPress address to use HTTPS under Settings > General in my dashboard.

I enabled Administration over SSL (reference) by adding the following to wp-config.php:

/**
* Admin over SSL
*/
define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true);

I set the port to 443 by adding the following to wp-config.php:

/**
* Set port to 443
*/
$_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'] = 443;

I installed and activated the CloudFlare plugin.

I set up CloudFlare on my site by creating the site on CloudFlare.com and updating my DNS.

In my CLoudFlare settings, I created a Page Rule to redirect all traffic from HTTP to HTTPS.

Everything then seemed to work properly, but I ran into a redirect loop problem when trying to access my dashboard. The error was documented on CloudFlare’s website, and they suggested using their plugin to fix the issue, but it didn’t work on my end. So I added this to my wp-config.php file:

/**
* Solve the redirect loop issue when redirecting all traffic to HTTPS in CloudFlare
* @see https://wordpress.org/plugins/cloudflare-flexible-ssl/
* @see https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/203487280--How-do-I-fix-the-infinite-redirect-loop-error-after-enabling-Flexible-SSL-with-WordPress-
*/
if ( isset( $_SERVER['HTTP_CF_VISITOR'] ) && strpos( $_SERVER['HTTP_CF_VISITOR'], 'https' ) !== false ) {
$_SERVER['HTTPS'] = 'on';
}

This comes straight from another plugin I found in the WordPress plugin repository, so you could use that plugin as well if you prefer.

That’s it! It seems that’s all there is to it!

Extra instructions if your site is hosted with Webfaction

If like me you host your sites with Webfaction, you might have some trouble setting up the site in the first place. Here is what you’ll have to do:

1. Add the domain to your admin panel.
2. Create a new application for your site, using the latest version of PHP available.
3. Create a website named yoursite_https, set up to deliver content via HTTPS, and using the domain and website you just created.
4. Now here comes the extra step: create an extra website, named yoursite_http, set up to deliver content via HTTP, and using the same domain and website.

It took me a while to figure this out. I had tried to set up a redirection via .htaccess, but nothing worked until I created that extra website.

Hopefully that will help the few of you trying to create the same setup!