I just finished installing an SSL certificate on JakeSavin.com. The main reason was to prevent impersonation and man-in-the-middle attacks while I'm editing or administering my site. I was using SSL to connect to my WordPress admin interface already, but with a self-signed certificate that produces warnings in the browser (in addition to not being as secure as it should be). Now that I have a CA-backed certificate, the warnings go away.
There are a some additional benefits to this:
- API clients like dedicated blog editing apps, that validate SSL certs (as they all should when connecting securely) should now work, though I have yet to test this.
- Anyone who visits my site can request the secure URL, and get an encrypted connection to protect their privacy. They can also be reasonably sure that they're actually visiting my real site and not an imposter—not that I'm actually worried about imposters.
- Google (at least) has started ranking sites that fully support SSL higher in their searches. Not that I'm really big on SEO for my site, but it's a “nice-to-have” feature.
See also: Embracing HTTPS (Konigsburg, Pant and Kvochko)
If you see any problems, please let me know via a comment, tweet or some-such.