A reader comments: “I think for a buck or two you can display the secure wwws.irl heading, making many of us more comfortable.”
Took me a minute to figure out what he was getting at. When it clicked I realized it was something I’d been meaning to do anyway but didn’t quite know how.
Most websites today are secure, meaning any data you enter is encrypted, making it harder for hackers to get your info. You can tell whether a site is secure by looking at its URL: “http” no, “https” yes. I don’t sell stuff here, so the only info readers ever enter are their names and email addresses when they comment on posts, but yeah, if I got a “Warning: you’re about to enter date into an unsecure site” popup when I submitted a comment, I’d be nervous too. So I took my reader’s suggestion to heart and set about making my sites secure.
This is probably more than you wanted to know. But if you’re that one guy or girl, here’s a short explainer titled HTTPS for Dummies — What You Need to Know.
Anyway, I got with my friend Scott, who hosts my sites on his server, and worked it out. My blogs are now secure. If you have them bookmarked, please update the URLs for a more secure experience:
- Paul’s Thing: https://pwoodford.net/blog
- Crouton’s Kitchen: https://pwoodford.net/cookblog
Big deal? Not to you, maybe, but it is to me. I don’t know coding from calculus. Everything I’ve learned about setting up and managing websites has been self-taught, mostly by looking at source code and parsing out how others do it. Successfully upgrading my sites from http to https? This is how it feels to me:
Now, for the other comment that reader left: “Please re-enlist me on your email list, I think I was accidentally dropped off, thanks, love this blog.”
I never did set up an email list for new post notifications. I didn’t want to contribute to the bloat in readers’ email inboxes. What I will do (eventually) is set up an auto-notification list for readers who ask to be notified of new posts on Paul’s Thing and Crouton’s Kitchen. Fair enough? Let me know if you want to be on that list, either in a comment to this post or by emailing me directly at woodfordpaul_at_gmail.com. Thanks!