https - Wordpress SSL config on Google cloud instance

I am trying to configure a Wordpress instance hosted on Google cloud to use https instead of http

I am trying to set it up as per these instructions:

https://jamescoote.co.uk/add-letsencrypt-ssl-certificate-to-wordpress/

to use letsencrypt

I've added installed the certificates as per those instructions. I also sylinked ssl.conf and ssl.load into mod-enabled.

I added the cert paths into the default-ssl.conf and symlinked that into sites-enabled but whenever I do this I can't get apache to restart. I get this message:

apache2.serviceJob for apache2.service failed. See 'systemctl status apa

che2.service' and 'journalctl -xn' for details.

but when I try those commands it doesn't give me enough information to solve the problem.

The contents of the default-ssl.conf look like this (I've changed the hostname but the rest is as is):

ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

    DocumentRoot /var/www/html

    # Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
    # error, crit, alert, emerg.
    # It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
    # modules, e.g.
    #LogLevel info ssl:warn

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined


    # For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
    # enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
    # include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
    # following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
    # after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
    #Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf

    #   SSL Engine Switch:
    #   Enable/Disable SSL for this virtual host.

    SSLEngine on

    #   A self-signed (snakeoil) certificate can be created by installing
    #   the ssl-cert package. See
    #   /usr/share/doc/apache2/README.Debian.gz for more info.
    #   If both key and certificate are stored in the same file, only the
    #   SSLCertificateFile directive is needed.
    # SSLCertificateFile    /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
    # SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key


    SSLCertificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/hostname/cert.pem
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/hostname/privkey.pem
    SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/hostname/fullchain.pem

    #   Server Certificate Chain:
    #   Point SSLCertificateChainFile at a file containing the
    #   concatenation of PEM encoded CA certificates which form the
    #   certificate chain for the server certificate. Alternatively
    #   the referenced file can be the same as SSLCertificateFile
    #   when the CA certificates are directly appended to the server

    #   certificate for convinience.
    #SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/server-ca.crt

    #   Certificate Authority (CA):
    #   Set the CA certificate verification path where to find CA
    #   certificates for client authentication or alternatively one
    #   huge file containing all of them (file must be PEM encoded)
    #   Note: Inside SSLCACertificatePath you need hash symlinks
    #        to point to the certificate files. Use the provided
    #        Makefile to update the hash symlinks after changes.

    #SSLCACertificatePath /etc/ssl/certs/
    #SSLCACertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/ca-bundle.crt

    #   Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL):
    #   Set the CA revocation path where to find CA CRLs for client
    #   authentication or alternatively one huge file containing all
    #   of them (file must be PEM encoded)
    #   Note: Inside SSLCARevocationPath you need hash symlinks
    #        to point to the certificate files. Use the provided
    #        Makefile to update the hash symlinks after changes.

    #SSLCARevocationPath /etc/apache2/ssl.crl/
    #SSLCARevocationFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crl/ca-bundle.crl

    #   Client Authentication (Type):
    #   Client certificate verification type and depth.  Types are
    #   none, optional, require and optional_no_ca.  Depth is a
    #   number which specifies how deeply to verify the certificate
    #   issuer chain before deciding the certificate is not valid.
    #SSLVerifyClient require
    #SSLVerifyDepth  10


    #   SSL Engine Options:
    #   Set various options for the SSL engine.
    #   o FakeBasicAuth:
    #    Translate the client X.509 into a Basic Authorisation.  This means that
    #    the standard Auth/DBMAuth methods can be used for access control.  The
    #    user name is the `one line' version of the client's X.509 certificate.
    #    Note that no password is obtained from the user. Every entry in the user
    #    file needs this password: `xxj31ZMTZzkVA'.
    #   o ExportCertData:

    #    This exports two additional environment variables: SSL_CLIENT_CERT and
    #    SSL_SERVER_CERT. These contain the PEM-encoded certificates of the
    #    server (always existing) and the client (only existing when client
    #    authentication is used). This can be used to import the certificates
    #    into CGI scripts.
    #   o StdEnvVars:
    #    This exports the standard SSL/TLS related `SSL_*' environment variables.
    #    Per default this exportation is switched off for performance reasons,
    #    because the extraction step is an expensive operation and is usually
    #    useless for serving static content. So one usually enables the

    #    exportation for CGI and SSI requests only.
    #   o OptRenegotiate:
    #    This enables optimized SSL connection renegotiation handling when SSL
    #    directives are used in per-directory context.
    #SSLOptions +FakeBasicAuth +ExportCertData +StrictRequire
    
            SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
    
    
            SSLOptions +StdEnvVars

    

    #   SSL Protocol Adjustments:
    #   The safe and default but still SSL/TLS standard compliant shutdown
    #   approach is that mod_ssl sends the close notify alert but doesn't wait for
    #   the close notify alert from client. When you need a different shutdown
    #   approach you can use one of the following variables:
    #   o ssl-unclean-shutdown:
    #    This forces an unclean shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. no
    #    SSL close notify alert is send or allowed to received.  This violates

    #    the SSL/TLS standard but is needed for some brain-dead browsers. Use
    #    this when you receive I/O errors because of the standard approach where
    #    mod_ssl sends the close notify alert.
    #   o ssl-accurate-shutdown:
    #    This forces an accurate shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. a
    #    SSL close notify alert is send and mod_ssl waits for the close notify
    #    alert of the client. This is 100% SSL/TLS standard compliant, but in
    #    practice often causes hanging connections with brain-dead browsers. Use
    #    this only for browsers where you know that their SSL implementation
    #    works correctly.

    #   Notice: Most problems of broken clients are also related to the HTTP
    #   keep-alive facility, so you usually additionally want to disable
    #   keep-alive for those clients, too. Use variable "nokeepalive" for this.
    #   Similarly, one has to force some clients to use HTTP/1.0 to workaround
    #   their broken HTTP/1.1 implementation. Use variables "downgrade-1.0" and
    #   "force-response-1.0" for this.
    BrowserMatch "MSIE [2-6]" \
            nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
            downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
    # MSIE 7 and newer should be able to use keepalive

    BrowserMatch "MSIE [17-9]" ssl-unclean-shutdown

# vim: syntax=apache ts=4 sw=4 sts=4 sr noet

when I checked to see if the certificates had been granted successfully they had. I guess there's some apache config that I haven't applied somewhere but I can't figure out what it is, any pointers would be appreciated.

Thanks

More details as requested:

This is the contents of the error log from apache:

[Thu Feb 23 06:46:55.153392 2017] [mpm_prefork:notice] [pid 1215] AH00163: Apache/2.4.10 (Debian) configured -- resuming normal operations
[Thu Feb 23 06:46:55.153424 2017] [core:notice] [pid 1215] AH00094: Command line: '/usr/sbin/apache2'
[Thu Feb 23 06:51:40.656914 2017] [authz_core:error] [pid 12411] [client 146.148.7.38:50713] AH01630: client denied by server configuration: /var/www/html/wp-config.old, referer: hostname/wp-config.old

[Thu Feb 23 07:42:52.938926 2017] [authz_core:error] [pid 12408] [client 146.148.7.38:51000] AH01630: client denied by server configuration: /var/www/html/wp-config.old, referer: hostname/wp-config.old
[Thu Feb 23 11:09:56.509913 2017] [mpm_prefork:notice] [pid 1215] AH00169: caught SIGTERM, shutting down
[Thu Feb 23 11:13:34.728029 2017] [mpm_prefork:notice] [pid 17535] AH00163: Apache/2.4.10 (Debian) configured -- resuming normal operations
[Thu Feb 23 11:13:34.728083 2017] [core:notice] [pid 17535] AH00094: Command line: '/usr/sbin/apache2'

Which doesn't strike me as being related to the issue but maybe I should remove that file anyway (although it starts ok when I removed the 443 section from the virtual host file)

This is the message from systemctl:

Failed to get D-Bus connection: No such file or directory - I got that having added the virtualHost section to my wordpress.conf to listen on 443, which what I had originally tried when starting to do this.