HTTP or HTTPS: What's the difference?

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HTTPS is HTTP with encryption. The only difference between these two protocols is that HTTPS uses TLS (SSL) to encrypt common HTTP requests and responses. As a result, HTTPS is far more secure than HTTP. A website that uses HTTP has http: // in its URL (link), while a website that uses HTTPS has https: //.

What is HTTP?

HTTP is an abbreviation of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol , and it is a protocol for presenting information used to transmit data over a network. Most of the information sent over the Internet, including website content and API calls, uses the HTTP protocol. There are two main types of HTTP messages: requests and responses.

What is an HTTP request?

HTTP requests are generated by the user's browser while the user is communicating with the browser. For example, if a user clicks on a link, the browser will send a series of requests for content that appears on that page. For example, if a user searches Google for "HTTP or HTTPS what are the differences?" And this article appears in the search results, when he clicks on the result, his browser will create and send a series of HTTP requests to get the information needed to display the page.

What is an HTTP response?

All of these HTTP requests go to the source server or caching proxy server and that server will generate an HTTP response. HTTP responses are responses to HTTP requests.

What is HTTPS?

Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS) is a secure version of HTTP, which is the primary protocol used to send data between a browser and a website. HTTPS is encrypted to increase data transmission security. This is especially important when users transfer sensitive data, for example by logging in to a bank account, e-mail ... Every site should use HTTPS, especially those that require confidential login information.

In modern browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox websites that do not use HTTPS are marked differently than those that do.
Look for a locked padlock in the URL bar to verify that the website is using HTTPS.

Here are some examples:

HTTP Google Chrome primer HTTPS Google Chrome primer HTTP Firefox primer HTTPS Firefox primer

Search engines take HTTPS seriously, so sites that still use the HTTP protocol sacrifice their position in search - Google will always give preference to sites that use HTTPS.

How does a website start using HTTPS?

Many hosting companies offer TLS / SSL certificate services for a fee.

In one of the next posts, we will address the topic of migrating from HTTP to the HTTPS protocol.

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