How Do I Solve ‘ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR’ in WordPress?

Here’s a step-by-step guide for how to fix the WordPress ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR

If you have a WordPress website and you or your visitors find yourself on the receiving end of an “ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR” warning message, then we understand your situation. Such SSL/TLS related errors are quite common, and the ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR in WordPress is probably one of the most common.

Let’s explore what this error message is and three approaches you can take to fix it.

What Causes the WordPress ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR Message

There could be many causes behind this error from the user side of things — everything from cache issues to problems with your operating system time settings. But what about when the issue is on the website’s end of things? This usually happens when there’s a problem with either the server that hosts a website or with the SSL/TLS certificate it hosts on it.

In this post, we’ve outlined step-by-step instructions for three ways to get rid of this error. If one doesn’t work, try the next. Soon, your website will be an error-free zone.

Three Ways to Fix the ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR in WordPress

Solution 1: Enable HTTPS on Your WordPress Website

This might sound like an obvious thing to do, but we as humans tend to take such small things for granted and forget them. That’s why, as the first step, we want to take a moment to emphasize making sure that you’ve enabled HTTPS on your WordPress website.

Follow the below instructions to enable HTTPS on your WordPress website:

• First, go to your WordPress dashboard.
• Click on Settings > General.
• Change your URL from “http://” to https:// in the menu.

Boom. That simple. But if that doesn’t work, we can move on to the next solution.

Solution 2: Redirect All URLs to HTTPS

Enabling HTTPS on the WordPress website doesn’t serve the purpose if there are content links in the website that still run on HTTP. That’s why you need to make sure that the users and search engines are accessing your website via HTTPS URLs only. Therefore, you need to add the below code to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain\.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R,L]


For Nginx, use the following code instead:

server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
server_name mysite.com www.mysite.com;
return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}


Solution 3: Check Whether Your SSL Certificate Is Installed Correctly

If neither of the above two solutions worked, then the problem likely rests with the SSL/TLS certificate that’s installed on your website. You must check whether the SSL certificate has been installed correctly on your server — or installed on it at all. (You’d be surprised how many people forget that important step.)

To check the status of your SSL/TLS certificate, you simply need to paste your website URL in our SSL checker tool. The tool will tell you if there’s any problem with your SSL cert.