Recently, I wrote the post of how to move a WordPress site to a new host with no downtime. At that time, I moved my site from non-secure site(http://) to secure site(https://). I notice that at the address bar, I don’t see the lock icon which represents the secure site. Instead, I see the info icon. When I click on the info icon, I see “Your connection on this site is not fully secure” message. Today I gonna share with you how to fix this issue and get the lock icon back.
If you see “Your connection on this site is not fully secure” message after clicking on the info icon as the screenshot below.
That means on your current web page, there is the mixing between “https://” and “http://“. In my case, my site is fully secure with “https://“(You can check your site from SSL Checker).
To fix this issue, I need to find the links that use “http://” and replace with “https://“. To do that, you can use the Better Search & Replace plugin for replace the “http://“.
Backup the database
Option1: Export database via cPanel
Before do anything, please backup the database first. You can go to cPanel and look for PHPMyAdmin. Click on it and you will see the database that your website uses(check on wp-config.php for the database name). Click on that database name and then click on Export menu. It will export the database as sql extension file.
Option2: Export database via plugin
If you don’t want to access cPanel, you can login to WP admin and install UpDraftPlus WordPress Backup plugin. After activate the plugin, you can create the backup for your database and download to your computer. This option is easy and faster than option 1 since you can do it right of WP admin.
Install Better Search and Replace plugin
At WP admin, install a Better Search and Replace plugin then activate it. This plugin will help you replace all links with “http://” to “https://“.
At search for field, you will fill in the old URL with “http://” you want to replace with. At replace with field, you will fill in the new URL with “https://” you want to replace to.
Note:
If your current URL is example.com, you will use example.com. But if your current URL is www.example.com, you will use www.example.com. This part is very important. If you add the wrong URL, your site will break. If your site breaks, you will use the backup database file for restore the database back.
At select tables field, you can select all tables or specific tables you want. You can read more about Database Description.
At Run as dry run option, this option won’t make any changes to the database but it will show how many data the plugin finds for replacing. If you uncheck this option and click on “Run Search/Replace” button, the plugin will make the changes on your database. I would run as dry run first and see the result then I will run again to make the real changes in the database. Remember, you need to backup the database first.
Once you replace all the links from “http://” to “https://“. You should see the lock icon at the address bar. If not, purge the cache plugin if your site has and clear your browser cache. That’s it for today. 🙂
