Hi Everyone,

Wow, what a summer we've had here at WA and I hope that you've enjoyed yourself! We've just experienced one of our most exciting summers in terms of forward movement of the WA platform, and I can't wait to deliver some truly groundbreaking updates to the WA platform this fall!

Today I want to tell you about some great new features we've just released!

SiteRubix Websites Welcome SSL!!

We have just released a major update to our website building experience at WA which makes all websites at WA for ALL members (Starter and Premium) more secure. Moving forward all websites built on our SiteRubix platform are secured with SSL Certificates. If you have a .siterubix.com site you can go and turn SSL ON!

We've always been big supporters of a secure Internet and we truly believe that we can get there. With our update today, all websites on our Wealthy Affiliate hosting platform can have SSL certificates and at no extra cost to you.

For anyone that may be wondering what SSL is, it stands for Secure Socket Layer and it's a layer of security that is added to your website which encrypts the communication from a browser to your website.

For example, if you're at Starbucks using WIFI and you login to your website, your browser sends your password to your site. If you have SSL turned ON, then that password is encrypted and no hacker or malicious software can intercept and capture your password.

This is a BIG Deal!

You can rest assured that with SSL turned on that data flowing from the browser to your website is secure. Your visitors can also rest easy entering data, and you can rest easy entering data to your site, because of this extra layer of security. This can drastically increase communication, engagement, and trust of your site.

Registered domains have had SSL at WA for some time now (read my initial post), but today SSL is available to everyone, including Starter members! Security is something that everyone deserves to have...now all members can operate SECURE websites at WA!

How to turn SSL on for your Website at WA?

First off, when you build a website at WA going forward we have SSL turned on by default!

If you do not have SSL turned on their websites it's crazy easy to do...and we suggest doing so now!

1. Visit your SiteManager dashboard and click the "Details" button for the site that you want to turn SSL Security on for.
2. Under the SitePlus+ Section you will see a toggle switch that you can click to turn SSL ON for...click it!

That's it.

Once you turn SSL on your site will be Secure, however you will want to visit your website and look for the green LOCK in your browser. If you do not see a lock, or you see a warning that there is insecure content on your site, then you'll want to fix that.

Below is a tutorial that discusses how to ensure all of your website content is SECURE. Most typically, you'll find that links to external websites that are not secure will cause a warning in the browser. You'll need to update those links following the above instructions.

Read the SSL Training Here

New members able to build their very first websites with SSL Security ON is something we're really excited about, we're pushing the Internet toward being 100% secure and can't wait for that to happen :)

Today isn't all about security though...let's talk SiteSpeed!

We've also released a big update to SiteSpeed (version 2.0) SiteSpeed is our proprietary, hardware enabled, and highly effective caching platform here at WA. WordPress websites are powerful, they are robust, they are widely supported and are the most popular type of website on the Internet. With that said, WordPress websites can be SLOW! All of that functionality you can add with Plugins and specialty Themes can slow down your site in a BIG WAY!

This is where our SiteSpeed platform comes into play, it speeds up your website drastically, making it BLAZING fast. Not only does this improve your visitor experience, it improves your rankings in Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.

Introducing Accelerated & Extreme Speeds

SiteSpeed at WA has historically had one option....ON or OFF. As of today, you can still turn SiteSpeed ON and OFF, but also choose from two speeds.

Accelerated: SiteSpeed Accelerated provides a sophisticated, highly compatible, and ultra fast caching option to vastly increase the overall speed of websites. This is the default caching option providing speed improvements for cached pages up to 20x faster than normal loading.

Extreme: SiteSpeed Extreme uses the same technology as the SiteSpeed Accelerated, however we take the optimization one step further by combining and minifying JavaScript and CSS. Experience even bigger speed gains over Accelerated and achieve the highest Google PageSpeed Insight scores.

Our new default "Speed" is the Accelerated option which turns on SiteSpeed for your site, yet leaves the optimization, combining and minimizing of files off. This is the most compatible form of caching and it's BLAZING fast.

Extreme takes things to the next level if you want to squeeze out the most speed and highest Google PageSpeed insight scores. It works with most websites and we certainly suggest trying Extreme. If you have issue with Extreme, then choose Accelerated.

Turn SiteSpeed On for ALL your Sites!

Turning SiteSpeed on for a website happens with the click of a button.

1. Visit your SiteManager Dashboard and click on the Details button for your site
2. Under the SitePlus+ section you will see a toggle switch which you can turn ON. Once it's on, choose Accelerated or Extreme speed options.

For more on SiteSpeed you can read more here.

SiteSpeed is available to all Premium members, for any Starter members who may be reading this, upon upgrading to Premium, we will turn SiteSpeed on immediately for your sites.

Faster load times, Better rankings, and a Better overall experience for your website visitors. We've implemented technical innovations within SiteSpeed that are not being done, and cannot be done with "website performance" type plugins. We're pushing the boundaries of what is possible with this platform and have even more exciting updates we're working on to improve speed and compatibility in the future.

At the opening of this post I alluded that we've experienced the most productive summer months that we've had in company history. We are currently working on some of the biggest projects we've ever released and this fall you can expect great things from us here at WA...in other words, we're just getting started with the next wave of updates streaming into the Wealthy Affiliate platform :)

So now it's your turn! We want to hear from you.

Are all your WA hosted websites WA secured with SSL? Do you have SiteSpeed turned ON?

Leave your comments below.