Hi Tom,
yes I have WordPress, I have read a few guides online about it.
for the search and replace part, I found a plugin called Better Search Replace: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-add-ssl-and-https-in-wordpress/
the instructions in the search engine journal article do the search-replace manually. The plugin should be better, have you tried it?
Good question. In all honesty, I think it's safe to go forward with an HTTPS migration.
I am a bit worried. I asked this question to many people in many forums and nobody replies. Which makes me wonder if it's something really bad. It would be nice to have additional opinions.