Mixed content and expired session issues with SSL and wp-admin
I am developing a site that has an SSL certificate. I've activated wp-admin being conducted over https (using define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true); in wp-config.php).
It's created a lot of issues using wp-admin.
1) Whilst doing things in wp-admin I'll regularly get a message saying the session has expired. As far as I can tell, this mostly happens when jumping from one admin page (url) to another page (url).
2) In Chrome I'll often see a little silver shield in the address bar indicating there are "unsafe scripts" the page is trying to load. I have to then manually tell it to load those scripts (I gather these are scripts wp-admin is trying to load over http, rather than https).
3) Some pages load fine with full HTTPS support (no mixed content) and the EV greenbar, etc. But other pages (in admin) will generate mixed content errors. It seems to be that when switching from a URL with mixed content errors over to one with no such errors (or vice versa) this is when the session expiration issues occurs (not 100% sure about that, but certainly looks that way).
On the front end I used whynopadlock.com to show me which resources were loading over HTTP when using HTTPS, and fixed them (it was simply images in posts, etc.). But since wp-admin requires one to log in, I don't have that option available.
I have two questions:
Q1) Is there a recommended way to get wp-admin to work correctly over SSL?
Q2) What's a recommended way to troubleshoot why wp-admin over SSL is so unstable? (meaning it works on some admin pages, breaks on others, and causes session expiration on others).
Thank you,
Jonathan
