As secure browsing is becoming crucial for netizens, the Web world has started looking for some protective ways. In this ongoing race, WordPress is all set to protect the Web by favouring hosting accounts using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
To give a boost to the websites supporting HTTP over SSL (HTTPS), WordPress has announced that it will only promote hosting partners that by default provide an SSL certificate to their clients. This development will begin starting early 2017 and would persuade a large number of webmasters to prefer an HTTPS connection over HTTP for their web properties.
The WordPress team is also in plans to bring features such as API authentication exclusive for SSL-supported websites. This would limit some advanced features on WordPress websites that are based on HTTP and yet to opt for an SSL certificate.
“2017 is going to be the year that we are going to see features in WordPress which require hosts to have HTTPS available,” writes Matt Mullenweg, one of the creators of WordPress, in a blog post.
Not just WordPress but companies like Google and Facebook are also supporting SSL to make the Web a safer place for all. In August, Google announced that HTTPS would become a ranking signal for its search engine. Notable results through the tweak are likely to be “very lightweight”, however, significant to influence webmasters to receive organic traffic steadily.
Fast and easy way to implement
Although opting HTTPS is the need of the hour for webmasters, implementing an SSL certificate on websites is still quite a difficult task. WordPress suggests projects like Let’s Encrypt to enable the security layer in a fast and free manner.
The WordPress developers are additionally uplifting JavaScript support and adding performance improvements in PHP7. These changes will improve the blogging experience over time.
