My site shows an SSL or certificate warning

This covers SSL and TLS certificate warnings, HTTPS errors and a broken padlock in the address bar.

A browser warning about a certificate is alarming and is usually mundane. It does not mean your site has been broken into.

The three common causes

1. The certificate has not been issued yet. Certificates are issued after your domain points at us - the issuing authority has to see the domain resolving here before it will confirm you own it. If you have only just pointed the domain, wait for DNS to settle and the certificate will follow.

2. Mixed content. The certificate is fine, and the page is loading an image, script or stylesheet over plain HTTP. The browser shows a broken padlock rather than a full warning. The fix is in the page, not the certificate - usually a hard-coded http:// address in a theme or a post.

3. You are visiting a name the certificate does not cover. A certificate for example.com and www.example.com will warn on shop.example.com. Check the address bar for a subdomain you did not expect.

What the warning text tells you

• "Certificate is not valid for this name" - cause 3.
• "Certificate has expired" - renewal did not complete; worth a ticket.
• "Not secure" with no interstitial - cause 2, mixed content.

Before you open a ticket

Try the site in a private window. Browsers cache certificates aggressively and a stale one is a genuinely common false alarm after a domain move.

If it is a genuine expiry

Tell us the exact domain including any subdomain. Certificates are issued per name, so "my certificate expired" without the name is one round trip we both have to wait for.