Force SSL with WordPress

By  on  

WordPress, the popular blogging CMS platform, is used as an all-purpose site software these days.  The difficulty in using all-purposes solutions is that they are often difficult to customize when edge cases pop up;  one of those edge cases can be forcing SSL.  Many form pages, for example, will be secured to gain user trust before filling them out.  WordPress provides an excellent method to secure individual pages!  Here's how you can force SSL within specific WordPress pages!

The PHP

To secure a specific WordPress post or page, you'll need to know its ID.  When you know its ID, it's securing the page is easy:

function force_ssl($force_ssl, $id = 0) {
	// A list of posts that should be SSL
	$ssl_posts = array(1, 12, 19);

	if(in_array($id, $ssl_posts)) {
		$force_ssl = true;
	}
    return $force_ssl;
}
add_filter('force_ssl' , 'force_ssl', 1, 3);

The force_ssl hook allows for us to check the post ID and force SSL if the post ID is in array of posts that should be secured!  Aren't WordPress hooks great to work with?

Recent Features

  • By
    39 Shirts – Leaving Mozilla

    In 2001 I had just graduated from a small town high school and headed off to a small town college. I found myself in the quaint computer lab where the substandard computers featured two browsers: Internet Explorer and Mozilla. It was this lab where I fell...

  • By
    9 Mind-Blowing Canvas Demos

    The <canvas> element has been a revelation for the visual experts among our ranks.  Canvas provides the means for incredible and efficient animations with the added bonus of no Flash; these developers can flash their awesome JavaScript skills instead.  Here are nine unbelievable canvas demos that...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Printing MooTools Accordion Items

    Sometimes we're presented with unforeseen problems when it comes to our JavaScript effects. In this case, I'm talking about printing jQuery and MooTools accordions. Each "closed" accordion content element has its height set to 0 which means it will be hidden when the...

  • By
    Animated AJAX Record Deletion Using jQuery

    I'm a huge fan of WordPress' method of individual article deletion. You click the delete link, the menu item animates red, and the item disappears. Here's how to achieve that functionality with jQuery JavaScript. The PHP - Content & Header The following snippet goes at the...

Discussion

  1. Keith Henry

    Be very careful securing some pages and not others on the same site – any cookies created in the secure area (for instance for login or user details) will be sent unencrypted to non-SSL pages, making interception attacks easy.

  2. Sunny

    Is it feasible to turn off cookies for secured pages? If so, how?

  3. Lynne

    Wondering what file you paste in the code above to secure a page/s with SSL.
    Also, are you saying that this piece of code:
    $ssl_posts = array(1, 12, 19); you simply replace those numbers with your page id?
    And with this code:
    add_filter(‘force_ssl’ , ‘force_ssl’, 1, 3); what is it’s purpose and do you also replace these numbers?
    I’d also be interested to know more about what Keith Henry has said about cookies potentially being sent unencrypted to non-SSL pages.

  4. Chris Waters

    Does this filter still exist? I can’t find any reference to it in the WordPress docs or code. As a result, I can’t seem to get this snippet working.

  5. Works like a charm!

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!