WordPress to favour only SSL hosting, starting 2017

As secure browsing is becoming crucial for netizens, the Web world has started looking for some protection. 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 early in 2017. WordPress plans to persuade a large number of Web masters to choose an HTTPS connection over HTTP for their Web properties.

The WordPress team also plans to bring out features such as API authentication exclusively for SSL-supported websites. This would limit some advanced features on WordPress websites that are based on HTTP and are yet to opt for an SSL certificate.

“2017 is going to be the year that we will see features in WordPress which require hosts to have HTTPS available,” wrote Matt Mullenweg, one of the creators of WordPress, in a blog post.

Apart from WordPress, 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, though significant’ in order to influence Web masters to receive organic traffic steadily. Although opting for HTTPS is the need of the hour for Web masters, implementing an SSL certificate on websites is still quite a difficult task. WordPress suggests using projects like Let’s Encrypt to enable the security layer in a fast and free manner.

The WordPress developers are additionally improving JavaScript support and overall performance in PHP7.

These changes will improve the blogging experience over time.