I recently developed an incentive website for a European bank, and one of the requirements was SSL - the website displays some personal customer data (though no financial or really sensitive data).
The website is hosted on a shared platform, and I've bought unique IP + SSL certificate at my webhost, they will do the installation.
Next monday the website will be thoroughly tested by an audit company, so I need to be sure everything is perfectly secured. The web application itself and the server are perfectly secured conforming the requirements - it's just the SSL that still needs to be installed.
My questions:
- Can someone explain to me in short (and in 'human' terms) what happens when an SSL certificate is installed?
- Does this require extra configuration in the website source code?
- Does this mean the website can not be reached over http, and only over https?
(Sorry for my noob questions - I'm a designer, not a server specialist..)
Thanks!
EDIT: Since I haven't had any really useful answers yet, let me add some extra explanation:
- I am not asking how to install a certificate, my webhost is going to do that for me
- I'm just looking for a basic understanding of SSL technology, since all info I can find on the web is a bit to specialized for my basic knowledge of server technologies.
- The thing that makes me wonder the most, is that my host told me my site will be accessible both on http & https - so what's the point of the certificate, then?