Questions about Security Certificate and Gzip

[airplayne]

Does anyone know how to make sure your security certificate is working for the administration portion of a joomla site.

Also, is it advisable to turn off, or disable, gzip on a site?

[AMurray]

I'm not sure about the GZIP question but for SSL, install the certificate through your web host.

In Joomla, you can "Force HTTPS" in global configuration (option being "None", "Administrator Only" or "Entire Site").

There should also be a similar option in the SSL security certificate configuration settings in your web hosting admin panel (or something similar like "SSL for this [specific] domain" or a global setting for SSL on all hosted sites/domains on the hosting service in your account.

My web host has its own branded custom hosting administration control panel (not cPanel) and SSL could be set with Lets Encrypt, and you could nominate global SSL or site-specific as I recall.

[airplayne]

I found the option both on my hosting provider website and in the global configuration settings of joomla to force https, however, when I do this the backend of Joomla loses all of its formatting when the site is loaded using the https prefix. Do I have to get a specific certificate for the /administrator portion of the website?

[ceford]

A security certificate usually applies to a domain - so it can be used for multiple websites such as www.example.com and development.example.com. Your browser will tell you if there is a problem.

If your web server is configured to gzip files you should turn it off in Joomla. But you should understand that in Joomla gzip refers to the html it returns in response to requests. JavaScript and CSS files are handled by the server and you may need to turn off (comment out) sections of the .htaccess file in the Joomla root.

[airplayne]

The default setting in Joomla 4.4.4 for gzip is "No". What do I need to look for in the htaccess file that would need to be commented out?