Forums shortly moving over to SSL and more awesomeness

[AUbicycles]

For most people, once the change is made, there may be a requirement to log in again to the forum... and that's it.

For the techies, the requirement for SSL pages has been in the pipeline for a while. Even though this site doesn't store any sensitive information - google still likes to penalise any websites that use the non encrypted data transfer (http). This forum will shortly 'force' https pages which means and this would generally not affect browsing and use though I have to go through the technical hoops to get it setup properly.

If you spot some weird activity over the next week, by all means report it here. It is possible that I am however aware but will still appreciate the reports.

The great news is that once this 'bothersome chore' is completed, then I will move to the next ones. Very specifically I really want an image hosting solution. There are so many great photos - particularly in the retro section - and because this is a community I have been working on solutions which will allow members to have a reliable image storage for photos they want to use on this site.

Stay tuned... as I may also seek further community input for some of the tricky questions to make sure I fulfil the needs and wishes.


Cheers
Christopher

[Cardy George]

Is that why we're seeing ads even though we're logged in? (I don't mind, just curious)

[twowheels]

SSL? for the rest of us, thx. What is the advantage? Direct post pics?

[AUbicycles]

Ads are there because its the way costs get covered, preferable for most members and me than a subscription


SSL in this case barely brings an added advantage... really about google setting the rules and the rest have to follow. So no extea features get unlocked... but when complete I can then move onto the next task.

[Cardy George]

Ads are there because its the way costs get covered, preferable for most members and me than a subscription

Agree 100% on that one! I just hadn't noticed them while logged in before

[Tequestra]

SSL in this case barely brings an added advantage... really about google setting the rules and the rest have to follow. So no extra features get unlocked...

I was slightly confused, as I am already logging in (AT) https://bicycles.net.au/forums and it seems that SSL is running much the same already over the past week as it runs on my own 'shared-hosting' based domain.

That is, the login & password process is encrypted, although on my site, I have a lunar calendar image and a weather report hosted at other domains and the URLs that I inevitably used a year ago before I realised the need to change to https are still pointing to the http URLs of those two sites. It is not any real reduction in https security at my site, but the 'Machines' decide the fate of the cyberworld just take any link on a site that is not https to be a possible threat, and if I didn't trust these links myself, then those Machines would be correct in their wild guess.

I figured that this site is the same, and I do much prefer https when the time comes to enter passwords. I do hope that the Google Machines will give you the green light instead of the amber which they rate both yours and my websites currently, because I can't be bothered going back and adding the 's' to the templates for both of those superfluous and innocuous external links over an error which is not necessarily as bad as google says it is.

[AUbicycles]

I had the https setup but it was not forced - so many would come in through the regular http.

With the amount of traffic, it is a burden to change but unfortunately is hard to escape.