WordPress site on Cloudflare via W3 Total Cache moved to https

I had a couple of WordPress sites I wanted to move to https from http; found the process was not so simple as just one click, via Site Health.

I had a couple of WordPress sites I wanted to move to https from http; found the process was not so simple as just one click, via Site Health.

Both were cached using W3 Total Cache; also with Cloudflare. And it seems that somehow, this led to issues.

Initially, the Site Health check by WordPress indicated the sites were ready for change to https – even without getting an SSL certificate for either. I believe as it “saw” SSL certificate from Cloudflare. But, when I tried the one click move, no use: had to revert, in my case by making edits to home and site url in the database, from https [as WordPress had changed them to], back to http.

Today, though, apparently had some success with achieving the move; in case of any use to anyone, as follows:

Got SSL certificate, from host company, for each of the sites.

To Cloudflare: disabled Cloudflare for the sites. [With one site, I first simply stopped Cloudflare caching; but ran into some issues later – requiring adding a few lines re SSH to the wp-config file. Only afterwards with this one, disabled Cloudflare; did so from the start with other site, which transitioned more smoothly.]

Emptied cache by W3 Total Cache; and disabled this plugin. Just in case of issues…

Then to Site Health. In this case, surely “saw” the SSL certificates on my website host. Then, one click to move to https. After which, had to login again.

Then, could reactivate W3Total Cache; along with reenabling Cloudflare. I also headed to domain management on my webhost, to redirect any requests for http pages etc, to https. Also enabled Full SSL/TLS encryption mode.

Some tips on using WordPress

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