What is Umbraco Latch?
Umbraco Latch is a new feature on Umbraco Cloud, available free of charge for all Umbraco Cloud websites. Umbraco Latch will automatically setup and configure TLS certificates for any website on Umbraco Cloud that doesn’t already have a manual certificate set up, thereby automatically enabling support for HTTPS for all sites.
This means no more battling with buying certificates, no installation and configuration necessary and no need to remember renewal dates - your website will simply support HTTPS out of the box.
With the certificates automatically in place and HTTPS automatically enabled, we recommend all Umbraco Cloud users to configure their site to use HTTPS by default. With this in place, your site will always use a secure connection to talk to customers, and the end user will see a nice green “Secure” label, instead of warnings and errors.
Why is it important to run HTTPS?
If there’s one topic that’s getting an ever increasing amount of attention in the online tech industry, it’s the importance of protecting data privacy with secure systems and secure communication. HTTPS plays an important role as it’s required to protect the data communication between website and end user.
This year, online technology companies such as Google and Mozilla are taking action against websites that don’t run HTTPS. They do this as a final push to get HTTPS adopted as a standard - an initiative we support at Umbraco.
HTTPS is not the default setup for most website platforms though because it requires the purchase, installation and management of valid TLS certificates. But with the introduction of Umbraco Latch, we are happy to announce that we are now changing this for all Umbraco Cloud customers, making all the certificate hazzles a thing of the past!
Proud Sponsor of Let’s Encrypt
An important initiative that helps us make this functionality available on Umbraco Cloud is called Let’s Encrypt. Let’s Encrypt helps Umbraco Latch by making it easy to obtain and renew certificates, enabling us to automate the process. We are big fans of Let’s Encrypt, which is why we are also a registered partner and sponsor of Let’s Encrypt.
How do you get Umbraco Latch?
It’s extremely simple. For new projects, all you have to do is attach a domain name to your Umbraco Cloud project and Umbraco Latch will enable HTTPS within minutes - yes, it’s really that easy!
We are also currently updating all existing Umbraco Cloud projects with Umbraco Latch. If your project has not been updated yet, simply re-add your domain configuration which will trigger Umbraco Latch for your domain.
If you are using a manual certificate today, but would like to switch to Umbraco Latch, simply remove your certificate from the manual configuration which will activate Umbraco Latch.
With Umbraco Latch handling your certificate, remember to configure your sites to use HTTPS by default - this is best practice and ensures that your website get better search rankings on Google and a reassuring green “secure” stamp in the browser.
And to make things even easier, we’ll shortly configure HTTPS as the default for all new Umbraco Cloud projects, meaning HTTPS will be available and default from the get go - no actions needed!
It’s important to note that Umbraco Cloud has always supported HTTPS, but with the introduction of Umbraco Latch, we take this support to the next level, making HTTPS available by default, without any certificate configurations or management needed and at no additional cost.
We are really excited about bringing you this feature on Umbraco Cloud, and it’s a great example of how we continue to grow the services of Umbraco Cloud, adding helpful features that makes it possible for our users to spend even more time and attention on building fantastic website solutions.
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