How to make your Facebook Fan Page SSL Secure – For Free (Hostgator)

Facebook Fan Page SSL for Welcome Pages

If you are like me and every other internet marketer who does “Welcome Page” Facebook Fan pages for clients, the news of Facebook going all “SSL-Only” on us really freaked you out.

All those clients who you have setup – what a nightmare – you have to explain to them what’s going on, you have to ask them to pay more (either to you – or their host), you may have to move them and you have a fast coming-up deadline of October 1st.

It’s an Internet Marketers NIGHTMARE I tell ya!

The Paid SSL Option

Like others, I started by purchasing an SSL certificate and installing it on one of my domains, with the intention of moving my own fan pages to that 1 domain and also being able to offer the same to my clients if if they didn’t want to purchase their own SSL certificate.

This is a time-consuming hassle that neither I or my clients want but that’s not the only problem with it – it also doesn’t work on sub-domains. Hostgator said a better solution would be to “upgrade” to a *wildcard* SSL certificate instead (a lot more expensive) – and still, there is the lingering problem that I dreaded the most – calling all my clients and explaining the Facebook SSL changes, telling them their Facebook welcome page won’t work unless they pay more money, etc.

Really – not cool. People are confused enough without that type of techno-geek talk. I don’t want to move any of my fan pages, so I’m quite sure that most of my clients will be the same as well, and they also wouldn’t want to pay more for something that is already *done*, and it’s not an easy thing to explain to people.

The Fabulous Free and Trouble-Free SSL Solution

But I’ve finally found a free solution, still using Hostgator, no move of any kind needed – and much less hassle than having to confuse everyone with the changes and options, etc. but it was never brought to my attention by any of the Hostgator staff who I talked about it with over the past few months. (I don’t think they know about it unless you ask specifically about it). So if you and your clients are using Hostator, then you are going to love me (& hostgator) today.

Step-by-step instructions on how to make your Facebook Fan Pages secure

So here it is, in all it’s glory (if hosted on Hostgator). And it’s really easy – just a little research and a quick update on the Facebook app page – all without having to move their pages anywhere or confusing them with talk of SSL certificates, security, or any other tech talk they don’t want to know about.

I hope this post makes your Internet Marketing day, like it did mine :)
Please share with other internet marketers or business owners who may have the same problem and have been fast running out of time for a quick and cheap solution.

Not on Hostgator? Other hosts may have the same solution, so check with your host to make sure that they have this service first, just ask them whether they have a “Shared SSL” solution.

1a.) Finding your Server Name (Option 1 – via eMail)

First thing we need is the Server Name. You can find this in 1 of 3 ways which I’ll discuss in this post. The first way is via the original Welcome Email that Hostgator sends new customers.

Hopefully you have those details – most of my clients take forever to find that particular email, or don’t have it because they had someone else set it up in the first place – so finding this information might be the hardest part of this whole process, however if you did the setup for them to begin with, then you probably have this information, otherwise there are 2 other options to find it (see below).

So ask them to find the original Welcome Email that Hostgator sent them which usually has the subject: HostGator.com :: New Account Info (server name illustrated in the screenshot above).

1b.) Finding your Server Name (Option 2 – via cPanel)

Can’t find the email but have access to cPanel? Awesome. Login to the cPanel (www.domain.com/cpanel)
On the left-hand-side is Stats. Click on “expand stats” and then scroll down until you find the server name (as illustrated above).
(If it’s not located as above, it might be under “Account Information” > “Server Name” for some of the other plans.)

1c.) Finding your Server Name (Option 3 – via Trace)

If the easy stuff fails, aside from just giving hostgator a call or using their live chat, then you can do a trace on the domain and see what the server name is. To do this on a PC (sorry Mac users – I have not used a Mac in about 8 years)

1.) Go to Start and type in “CMD” (or go to Start > All Programs > Command Prompt)
2.) Type in tracert www.domain.com
3.) Wait for it to finish and eventually it tells you the server name (as illustrated above).
4.) Type the word exit in to close.

2.) Find Your cPanel User Name

Next, you need to find out what your cPanel username is. If you have a reseller account, all your clients usernames will be listed under “List Accounts” in your Reseller backend. If you have a normal account, it will be listed in your original welcome email.

The username is the same username you use to login to cPanel. So in the example above, the username is jimmy.

3.) Your Secure SSL Address for a Shared Account (Gator123)

If you or your client has a shared account (unlike a reseller account), then they need to substitute the word “gator” with “secure” in the server name.
For example, if your server name is gator123.hostgator.com – then your secure server name would be – secure123.hostgator.com instead, then you add /~username to the path, then the path to the folder with your facebook fan page.

End result example would be something like:https://secure123.hostgator.com/~jimmy/fbfanpage/

4.) Your Secure SSL Address for a Reseller Account (WebsiteWelcome)

If you are hosted on a reseller account, then you probably have a websitewelcome.com server address rather than a hostgator address.

Here is an actual working example of one of my demo facebook pages hosted on a reseller account:
https://roadrunner.websitewelcome.com/~webwooky/fb/squeeze-page/squeeze.html

roadrunner = name of my server
websitewelcome.com = hostgator reseller server
~webwooky = username
/fb/squeeze-page/squeeze.html = the path to my demo fan page

5.) Adding it to Facebook

1.) Login to Facebook then browse to https://developers.facebook.com/
2.) Click on Apps
3.) Select the Facebook App that you setup for your Facebook Fan Page
4.) Click on Edit Settings
5.) Update the Secure Canvas URL and the Secure Page Tab URL with the new Secure address
6.) Turn on your Secure Browsing and check your Facebook page to make sure that it all works (if you see “Please update your secure tab URL” then you know you have stuffed up something in Facebook)

This is for normal Facebook fan pages – For WordPress Fan pages, it gets a little bit tricker -  there will be a future post or webinar about this soon (I can’t do it today, these 2 blog posts took up my allocated “Fun time”, now I’m back to work on my clients), but for wordpress fan pages that are JUST fan pages (as in, not your normal blog as well), you can just go into the General Settings of your self-hosted WordPress and change both the WordPress Address URL and Site URL to the secure address as above.

But, there could be other complications such as internal images and videos not working or if you host a fan page from within an existing blog, etc, that you need to consider before doing that (i.e. do not do that at all, unless the wordpress install is 100% just a fan page).