HTTPS and SSL

Strong encryption is critical to ensure your privacy and security while using WordPress.com. We encrypt all domains that are registered and connected to a WordPress.com website with an SSL certificate.

We consider strong encryption so important that we do not allow you to compromise the security of your site by disabling it. We also 301 redirect all insecure HTTP requests to the secure HTTPS version.

See some common questions below for more information about HTTPS and SSL on WordPress.com.

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How do I install an SSL certificate on my WordPress.com site?

You don’t need to! We install SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt on all WordPress.com sites. It will happen automatically.

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Why is my site missing an SSL certificate?

Our automated process adds SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt shortly after the registration or connecting of domains. It may take up to 72 hours to add an SSL certificate to your site. If you are not seeing it yet, give it some time to take effect.

For domains connected from other registrars, SSL certificates are added after you complete the connection process.

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Does HTTPS make my site slower?

This used to be true, but technologies like HTTP/2 have significantly improved performance. In some cases, encrypted HTTP/2 traffic even outperforms its unencrypted counterpart. We make sure our servers are globally distributed and compatible with the latest emerging technologies, ensuring the best possible user experience.

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How do I get those annoying security warnings to go away?

In general, you should never see security warnings while using WordPress.com. If you do, please contact support and let us know the details.

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Why do I see tls.automattic.com in my certificate's common name (CN)?

If you have a custom domain on WordPress.com, we secure it using a SSL certificate from the Let’s Encrypt Certificate Authority. To improve the performance and simplicity of this process, we use the same Common Name, tls.automattic.com, for all certificates and store the unique domain names, grouped in batches of about 50, in the SubjectAltName attribute. All modern browsers honor this attribute and will not display any warnings or errors to you or your visitors.

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Do you support security headers such as HSTS?

Currently, we send a Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS) header with all of our HTTPS responses.