Have you been in a situation where you do not see the secure lock icon on your website after setting up the SSL certificate, and you need to troubleshoot SSL certificate issues?
This naturally raises a doubt that perhaps the SSL Certificate you received wasn't been properly issued. So what do you do when faced with this doubt?
We recommend you check for these THREE aspects to troubleshoot SSL certificate issues:
- Is the certificate correctly issued?
- Has the certificate been setup correctly?
- Is there too much mixed content on the page?
Troubleshoot SSL Issues: Checking if your certificate is correctly issued
Your certificate file contains encrypted text which cannot be read and understood by you. To help you with this we have a free online SSL Certificate Decoder tool.
You should use this tool to check the following information:
- If the domain/common name is correct.
- If the certificate validity information is correct.
If this information is correct then the issue could be with the certificate setup.
Troubleshoot SSL Issues: Checking if your certificate is correctly setup
Once you setup the certificate is setup on your web server/website most people open the website on their web browser and see if the secure lock icon displays for their website.
In cases where the secure lock icon does not display for the website, the possible reasons to troubleshoot SSL would be one (or more) of the following:
- Where the website has an expired certificate, the old certificate files may not have been correctly replaced with the new ones. Check the location of the old and new files from where they are accessed by the web server. If it is incorrect, you need to fix it based on your web server platform. more info
- The web server may require a restart after setting up the new certificate files, and this may not have been done. Restart the web server, and empty browser cache, to check for the lock icon using your web browser.
- The Intermediate certificate may not have been setup with the domain certificate. Check this using this free online SSL Installation Checker tool. If the certificate chain shows up broken without an Intermediate certificate, then you need to fix it by setting it up correctly as per your web server platform. more info
Troubleshoot SSL Issues: Check for Mixed content
Sometimes the secure lock icon still does not display. In such cases, check the content of the page. The issue of mixed content exists on website pages when resources such as images, scripts, videos, etc. are being requested via http instead of https.
This issue could be caused by your website code, or some JavaScript library your website uses that maybe loading too many resources using http instead of https.
We have this free online Why No Padlock tool to help you troubleshoot this aspect.
