Why is My Blog Post Not Secure? How to Troubleshoot A Missing Padlock

You think you did everything right when it comes to SSL.

Somehow you worked with your host or your web person and got that darned SSL certificate installed.

But lo and behold, one day you visit one of your own posts and title bar says “Your connection to this site is not secure.”

In the Chrome browser this shows up as a gray circle with a little “i” in it next to your URL. (If the page is secure, the title bar will say “Secure” and show a green padlock”.

So now what?

You could call your web person back, if you have one.

Or you could try to figure out the problem yourself.

Here are 3 steps you can take.

But before we dive in, let me ask you a question.

Does the technical side of blogging drive you bananas? If little technology tips like this one make blogging just a little easier, then why not sign up for our newsletter?

1. Visit Several Pages On Your Site

The first thing that I usually do if I notice that a blog post is not secure on my site is visit several different posts and pages on my blog.

Typically, I will visit

• the homepage and
• a few posts from different categories.

Take note as to which posts are secure and which are not.

If just the one blog post that you were looking at is not secure, then the problem probably lies somewhere in the body of that post.

But if the whole site is not secure, the problem is probably located in the sidebar or the footer.

However, if you have different sidebars for different categories or pages on your website then you have to narrow down which sidebar might be causing the problem.

You may have different sidebars if you use the Genesis Framework for WordPress and the Genesis Simple Sidebars plugin, for example.

2. Find The Culprit

Now it is time to find out the exact reason why the blog post is not secure.

There is a very handy and free online tool called Why No Padlock.

Just visit the site, and paste in your affected URL (or one of them, if you have more than one). It takes a few seconds for the tool to do it’s thing.

When it is done it will spit out a list of errors.

3. Fix the Errors

On my site the typical reason why a blog post is not secure is because of something called an insecure image call.

Usually, this happens when I embed a banner ad in the body of my blog post or in my sidebar.

Recently, I placed a PicMonkey banner ad in my sidebar.

I had grabbed the code from my ShareASale dashboard.

But I had forgotten to check a little box under the code that says “Secure Image Call”.

I went back, checked the box, copied and reinserted the code into my sidebar – and my blog post was secure again.

If you have a caching plugin, you may need to clear the cache and refresh the page to see if your fix worked.

You can also rerun the post through the Why No Padlock tool.

Rinse and Repeat

You may need to repeat the whole process for different blog posts on your website.

It is possible that you have more than one error that makes your blog post not secure.

If you can at least pinpoint the problem, you can then reach out to a web person for help.