We're very excited to announce two new features that are available immediately to all NitroHost accounts: Free SSL certificates, and a cutting edge HTTP/2 implementation. How do these tie together? Glad you asked!

Free SSL Certificates:

Effective immediately, all domains that are active on our servers have been issued an SSL certificate free of charge. Even better, the certificates renew automatically (also free of charge) for as long as you remain a NitroHost customer. Please note that "active on our servers" includes all domains and subdomains that resolve to our servers, whether primary domains or addon / parked domains. Domains that you have added to your account but do NOT resolve to our servers (e.g. they are parked at the registrar or have expired) cannot be issued an SSL certificate as there is no way to perform the required validation.

Also please note that if you already had your own SSL certificate, it has not been replaced and will not be replaced unless you allow it to expire.

HTTP/2 Implementation:

Please try to stay awake for this, it's somewhat technical but we'll do our best to make it digestible if not exciting.

HTTP/1.1 has been the standard since...well honestly since What PC magazine used to come with an AOL CD stuck to the front cover. When a visitor to a website makes a request for a page, it is actually a great many requests. Often 50 - 100 requests by the time images, stylesheets, Javascript files etc are added up. HTTP/1.1 can only make one request at a time, leading browser developers to make their browsers open multiple connections simultaneously in an attempt to speed things up. It doesn't work especially well, and it also steals resources from other users since servers can only have so many connections open at one time. This isn't a good situation for anybody.

HTTP/2 is a newer standard that multiplexes those requests over a single connection. Think of it this way: you're in your favorite trendy coffee shop and you want to order 50 different coffees for your co-workers. Hey, you're a generous soul! Under the HTTP/1.1 way of doing things, you might have 5 baristas serving you and you would have to ask each of them for one of your coffees one at a time then wait for them to return before you could order another. Zzzzzzzzzzz. You're also hogging those 5 baristas and preventing them from serving other customers. The HTTP/2 equivalent is plopping down a list of all 50 coffees that you want on the counter, and as quickly as possible they are returned to you without any further interaction. Way more efficient. This is particularly important for mobile users where computing resources are often limited and speed is a bigger concern. Multiplexing requests into a single stream makes a big difference to the mobile experience.

For various reasons, the major browser developers have chosen to only allow HTTP/2 to take place over secure connections. This is why we're so excited to be able to offer free SSL certificates as it enables all of our customers to benefit from HTTP/2 at no cost. Apart from the speed benefit of HTTP/2, which we have measured at anywhere between 15% to 35% depending on the site, having all connections to/from a site encrypted with the latest 256bit ciphers has two more benefits: 1) additional trust from the perspective of your visitors as all pages will show the padlock and/or green lock icon; 2) Google have recently announced a small bump in ranking for sites that implement what they call HTTPS Everywhere i.e. sites where all requests are over a secure connection. As users become ever more conscious of online security, whether it's due to concerns about hackers, eavesdroppers, even snooping by alphabet agencies, why not offer them the security of always-encrypted connections, give them a speed boost, and get an SEO bump into the bargain?

Sounds Great! What Now?

We've written an FAQ that will walk you through implementing HTTP/2 on a WordPress site which covers the vast majority of sites that we host. Please take your time when following the instructions, and also note the differences for sites that have CloudFlare enabled. And yes, even CloudFlare enabled sites will work with our HTTP/2 implementation as our Optimized Partner status allows us to offer you free CloudFlare SSL too! The steps are just a little different.

If you are not running WordPress, guess what? There's an FAQ for that too.

We hope that you will make good use of these new features, and as always, we appreciate your continued business. If you have any questions, please let us know.