Overview

If you see an error that “The site can’t provide a secure connection” or ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR,  this is due to the webserver not providing an SSL certificate.

The error message may look like:

this site can't provide a secure connection

To fix

In order to add an SSL to your site, you will need to contact your hosting company. They will be able to install an SSL certificate on your behalf or show you how to do it.

Technical test and confirmation

You can test this via an OpenSSL command:

openssl s_client -showcerts -connect www.yourdomain.com.au:443

If you see a copy of the certificate, as well as details of the issuer. For example, this is from a working system: 

Server certificate
subject=/CN=www.yourdomain.com.au
issuer=/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=RapidSSL SHA256 CA

If you don’t have a valid certificate, you’ll see something like this:

SSL handshake has read 7 bytes and written 305 bytes
---
New, (NONE), Cipher is (NONE)

This means that no certificate was available and therefore the OpenSSL client was unable to establish an encrypted connection.

To resolve, you’ll need to ensure that your webserver or Content Distribution Network (CDN) provider (eg, Cloudflare) has properly enabled the SSL certificate for your website.

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