In this thread, Stranger on a Train linked to an earlier thread with an https URL. Apparently, I always browse the SDMB unencryptedly, because I was surprised to see it respond with a certificate error. Is this known to TPTB? Are y’all planning to fix?
Here’s the same (https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=797411) with https, by the way.
I didn’t think we had a security certificate installed here. As far as I am aware, there’s no plan to add one.
Given the fact that going to any SDMB page preceded by HTTPS yields a certificate error I would say the question about whether or not one is installed is pretty much indisputable.
The certificate is issued to cloudfront.net which I think now hosts the SDMB so a security certificate must be part of the deal. But since it isn’t specifically for the SDMB visitors get that error.
Note that browsing the site at the https version doesn’t make it secure, however, as all the links in the SDMB’s programming seem to hard code references to the http version of the site. So you load a page using a secure connection and it then makes 500 insecure connections to load all the content, scripts, etc. That setup would yield a different warning even if the first one were resolved.
The word on the street is that https sites get higher rankings with google and advertisers so my guess is that it is just a matter of time before the SDMB goes secure.
I temporarily allowed the certificate, and found all it does is redirect back to the HTTP site. So it doesn’t actually do anything as of right now.
A more normal setup would be for https://boards.straightdope.com not to work at all.