I decided to bite the bullet and obtain an SSL certificate and install it on this VPS, and configure Apache2 to use HTTPS instead of plain HTTP.
I used Fasthost again to obtain the SSL certificate, and some of their instructions were a little dodgy regarding the steps to install it and get Apache to work with SSL. I managed in the end though.
gm4slv.org.uk
now has a SSL certificate and connections to port 80 HTTP will be automatically redirected to port 443 HTTPS.
The steps with Apache (ignoring the process of obtaining the certificates):
There are 3 certificate files:
*.key
is generated on the VPS itself with openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout gm4slv.org.uk.key -out gm4slv.org.uk.csr
*.crt file
obtained from the signing authority via FastHost (it's the gm4slv.org.uk.csr key signed by the authority's key)Once the keys are to hand:
/usr/local/ssl/
default-ssl.conf
virtual host site fileSSLCertificateFile /usr/local/ssl/signed.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /usr/local/ssl/gm4slv.org.uk.key
SSLCertificateChainFile /usr/local/ssl/ca.pem
a2enmod ssl
sites-enabled
pointing to sites-available/default-ssl.conf
000-default.conf
ServerName gm4slv.org.uk ServerAlias www.gm4slv.org.uk Redirect permanent / https://gm4slv.org.uk/
Job Done