---
title: "SSL certificate"
description: "The credential that lets a site be served over https. Modern ones are really TLS certificates; the older name stuck."
topic: "Technical Constraints"
canonical: "https://geordy.ai/glossary/technical-constraints/ssl-certificate"
---
# SSL certificate

The credential that lets a site be served over https. Modern ones are really TLS certificates; the older name stuck.

A certificate proves a server is entitled to answer for a hostname, which is what makes the padlock, and https, possible. Nothing serious will fetch a page over plain http any more: browsers warn, and crawlers commonly skip. For a subdomain serving machine-readable files the practical question is only whether the certificate is issued and renewed automatically, because an expired one takes every file on that host offline at once.
---

Source: https://geordy.ai/glossary/technical-constraints/ssl-certificate
This is a machine-readable markdown version of that page, generated by Geordy.