susanwrotethis

Can you tell us a little more about what Google is saying about wp-login.php?

I should add that the Let’s Encrypt program won’t be issuing wildcard SSL. If you’re not being required to purchase the cert through your host, you could shop around. The advantage of going through your host is that they can see your sites and have a clearer idea of what you need.

This is correct; you do need wildcard SSL when you have subdomains requiring HTTPS, whether you’re using WordPress or not. Here’s an article that may provide some useful information and a possible solution for you: https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2014/11/free-ssl-certificates-lets-encrypt-ssl-eff/.

A trio of questions:

1. Is your multisite set up as subdirectories or subdomains?
2. If it’s using subdirectories, are you using any domain mapping?
3. If you’re using subdomains or domain mapping, is it a wildcard SSL certificate?

A single SSL certificate will work for multisite only if you’re using subdirectories without domain mapping. If we can rule that out as the source of your problem, can you describe what happens with the two plugins you’ve tried? It may help us pinpoint where the error is.

We were facing a similar situation about a year and a half ago and found that the FeedWordPress plugin would provide the functionality we needed. Since then the WP REST API has been released, and we’d pursue that option first if we were looking into this again. Neither would require that all the sites be together on multisite.