Category: Web Servers

Once HTTPS was complex and expensive. I remember working at a bank in 1998ish and buying a certificate for the website and installing in on the Netscape server and generally thinking I was a very good webmaster.

At some point the additional friction (i.e. speed) become negligible and the slogan was “let’s HTTPS everything because security!” And yes, I said, that makes sense.

But I didn’t here, on my blog, because… why?

But recently I joined an online community and you could only supply a blog URL if it was HTTPS. Huh.

Then someone else said when you open a HTTP link in WhatsApp it automatically uses HTTPS and the link breaks. Yes, that’s what happens to me.

So alright. Things change. I need to change, sometimes. (As I get older, in my 50’s now, I don’t want to be the old guy that never updates himself, but I also don’t want to be the guy that chases inane trends. So I wait these things out, and on this point I’m ready to move)

So I went to my host and it’s like real money to get a certificate. Jeez.

Luckily there’s Reddit, who reminded me about https://letsencrypt.org which is 0 moneys. So now that’s on my to-do list.

As we build more and more functionality into both the client and server sides of the Internet, we’re ending up with, well, client-server technology. But instead of a server in a closet up on the 3rd floor, it’s around the world.

If Microsoft were to update Visual Basic’s user interface and transmission protocols a little, they could leapfrog everyone with a rich Internet application platform ;-)

Apparently a lot of people are suffering from downtime at Dreamhost lately. I’ve run one site with them and found everything they did frustrating, from the control panel to the uptime to the customer support. I’ve been a Pair.com customer since 1999 and love them. They’re not the cheapest, though when I consider they’ve had no downtime ever and I’ve only had to contact customer service once, that makes it quite a good value.

Feel free to use my affiliate code when signing up :-)

If you’re setting up a new domain name and hosting account, code PAIRNIC381 will discount the setup fees at Pairnic and Pair.com.

This .htaccess tutorial reveals that this one little file is more than you ever imagined! Password-protect files, redirect files or whole directories, specify error pages, prevent directory listings and hotlinking to images, and more!

Apache web server not included.