I have added several of my websites to Cloudflare over the past week or so and have been weighing up whether to force them all through https.
I have one site that is forced through https and it gives me no probs on my Windows laptop.
On my Linux Mint machine the site is accessible in Firefox, but in Web (Konquerer) and Opera I get “SSL handshake failed” or a similar message.
Is this a reason NOT to force SSL or just an argument for using a decent browser? Or is it because the connection is only partly encrypted? Of course, some of my potential visitors might not have a decent browser…
Can you tell me more about the actual boxes the sites are hosted on. Is it a shared server or a VPS/dedicated server?
The reason I ask, is if it is a VPS or dedicated, setting up a TRUE SSL through Lets Encrypt is dead simple and I’d highly recommend doing that so you have HTTPS to HTTPS via Cloudflare, which is likely the handshake issue (though I’d have to see the issue first hand to try and confirm that).
Thanks @cpradio. It’s a shared hosting system. I had previously thought of using Let’s Encrypt but the host doesn’t support it. With over 35 sites the thought of changing doesn’t appeal
With cloudflare they do SSL termination for you and your VPS can just talk plain http. The connection from the browser to cloudflare is SSL encrypted but from cloudflare to your vps is not. Depending on your use case this can be perfectly acceptable, depending on how sensitive the data going over the wire is.
As for the errors you get, I would first try to get to the bottom of what exactly is causing the errors before making any further decisions.
