I'm new to using SSL and would like some advice if any is available

I have a 'control panel' area on one of my sites which contains lots of forms and data transfers between server and client. No data is passed to a 3rd party.

My server has SSL support installed

Is securing the data transfers as simple as using https:// instead of http://?

yes but no.

yes you can use https in the address bar and the data passed with be secure though you also need to make sure any image calls are https too, same applies to form actions.

Great!

All y urls in the control panel are absolute (links, images, form actions, stylesheets etc etc), so I just need to find and replace http:// for https://.

Will this affect the sessions? I use PHP transparent sessions, SID?

Cheers -

Nice one moby, I've been wondering about this as well,

Thanks sophie for raising the question - never thought it would be so simple

I have a similar layout but will be passing transaction details over to paypal whicj involves exchanging of public and private keys - all new to me, so what fun it will be........

well - some Apache installs are configured to serve secure content from one directory and non-secure content from another

check your FTP - if you have a httpsdocs folder - you may need to move your pages into it

In the implenteation I'm using I have a httpdocs and a https docs. I could choose to run both from one, but didn't!