HTTPS Has Gotten Easier—If You Consolidate
For years, HTTPS was a genuine pain point. Third-party certificate purchases, tricky installations, expiring certs, and unhelpful hosting support were all part of the routine. In recent years, however, the landscape has shifted considerably. Hosts now frequently offer SSL as a one-click toggle, CDNs and static hosts provision certificates automatically, and free services have matured to the point where the hardest part is often just deciding where to host.
The shift is partly driven by infrastructure providers taking on the responsibility. Flywheel, for instance, handles HTTPS with a simple admin switch. Netlify enables HTTPS by default on all new sites, and Cloudflare offers free security and performance features—including certificates—as a front-end layer. Those who once had to wrestle with certificate management now find it largely abstracted away.
The “HTTPS is Easy!” Case in Point
Troy Hunt’s microsite, HTTPS is Easy!, walks through the process in a four-part video series, each under five minutes. It demonstrates adding enterprise-grade security to a site using Cloudflare’s free tier. While the content might read like an advertisement, Hunt clarifies it is not a paid endorsement:
“[…] this isn’t a commercial activity on my behalf; Cloudflare didn’t engage me to create this and it’ll come as a surprise to them the first time they see it.”
The claim that HTTPS is now easy holds up in practice—provided you minimize the number of distinct environments you manage.
The Value of Fewer Setups
A key part of reducing HTTPS-related stress is consolidation. Keeping WordPress sites on a single host like Flywheel means learning one admin interface for SSL. Using a single deployment tool, managing all domains through one registrant, and routing all traffic through Cloudflare lowers the cognitive overhead. When every site shares the same security stack, the knowledge you gain from one project applies to all others, making certificate management—a historically fraught area—feel routine.
