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Ask HN: Put my entire website behind ssl?

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Re: Ask HN: Put my entire website behind ssl?

#4

Post by mattgaidica »

No. I think the HTTPS in the browser prompts a user to think there is confidential information being passed when your just browsing, so now your break user experience. The app portion could be, and should be for any semi-secret information, but keep the front-end clear of it. Plus any and all external resources in-page must be https, it might hang you or a designer up down the road and break your cert.

Re: Ask HN: Put my entire website behind ssl?

#6

Post by HerraBRE »

mattgaidica wrote: post #4

No. I think the HTTPS in the browser prompts a user to think there is confidential information being passed when your just browsing, so now your break user experience. The app portion could be, and should be for any semi-secret information, but keep the front-end clear of it. Plus any and all external resources in-page must be https, it might hang you or a designer up down the road and break your cert.

I disagree. I might not spring for an EV cert in most cases, but using basic encryption to protect against casual eavesdropping should be the rule, not the exception.

Re: Ask HN: Put my entire website behind ssl?

#7

Post by rubyskills »

mattgaidica wrote: post #4

No. I think the HTTPS in the browser prompts a user to think there is confidential information being passed when your just browsing, so now your break user experience. The app portion could be, and should be for any semi-secret information, but keep the front-end clear of it. Plus any and all external resources in-page must be https, it might hang you or a designer up down the road and break your cert.

Very good points!

It's very interesting to me that when SSL opens up, you immediately feel like confidential information information is going to be passed (which is usually the case).. I didn't think about that before!

The app portion is def. protected by SSL and switches to that context when you hit the login path.

Your last point is interesting too, as we do pull in external resources such as google fonts, jquery (google's CDN), analytics, etc. but have managed to find an SSL version of those URL's too (luckily). I do see this becoming painful for designers moving forward though when they're trying to pull in external resources that lack support for https url's.

All very good points.

Do you think the average user notices the SSL activation bar?

Re: Ask HN: Put my entire website behind ssl?

#9

Post by rubyskills »

trotsky wrote: post #8

Are there any SEO or other indexing issues that crop up if you're only running TLS?

This is a good question! I have no idea. I know that there are sites that do run behind SSL (like paypal) and their pages seem to appear on google just fine. As far as how this impacts your PR, I have no idea.

Re: Ask HN: Put my entire website behind ssl?

#10

Post by mattgaidica »

HerraBRE wrote: post #6
mattgaidica wrote: post #4

No. I think the HTTPS in the browser prompts a user to think there is confidential information being passed when your just browsing, so now your break user experience. The app portion could be, and should be for any semi-secret information, but keep the front-end clear of it. Plus any and all external resources in-page must be https, it might hang you or a designer up down the road and break your cert.

I disagree. I might not spring for an EV cert in most cases, but using basic encryption to protect against casual eavesdropping should be the rule, not the exception.

I am 100% with that mentality, I guess I just see the overhead and understanding of HTTPS causing more problems in practice than solutions for developers who are not security-centric. Think we'll ever see google.com go to SSL?
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