SSL Certificate
In one sentence
The document proving a site's identity and enabling the encrypted connection.
Analogy Mental model
The business licence on the wall. It shows the shop is registered rather than a front.
In practice What you actually do
Domain-validated certificates are free and sufficient for most sites. Organisation validation adds a verified company name; extended validation no longer earns the visual emphasis it once did. Automate renewal, because expiry is the failure mode.
Where people get burned Pitfalls
An expired certificate produces a full-page browser warning most visitors will not click through. The fix takes five minutes and the outage costs more than the certificate ever did.
This entry was written in English from the Chinese original, not machine-translated. Read the Chinese version →