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Post by Dabeagle on May 10, 2024 6:05:10 GMT -5
Hello dear readers, It may come as a surprise to some of you that The Doghouse has been represented for years by the domain extensions .com, .net and .org. My rationale behind maintaining these separate extensions was access. Many filters will catch the .com while not noticing the other two extensions, or at least that has been my perception from long ago accessing the site from my own office.
For 2023 dabeagle.com had about 60k visits, down 2.8% from the previous year. Dabeagle.net had nearly 25k visits, an increase of just over 10% Dabeagle.org had about 6500 visits, an increase of about 4%
One of the prevailing issues of our online experience is security. My website only has static text and images, so nothing to hang around and steal your information. However you'll note that when you access the site, your browser may say the site isn't secure. This references the 'http:\\' at the beginning of your address bar; a website with a secure connection begins with 'https:\\' - you'll note the 's' on the end. It came to my attention that browser security is starting to steer users away from 'non-secure' sites and may even warn them they are visiting a non-secure site, which may cause readers some hesitancy to come read. My web provider offers me one free security certificate, but I'd have to pay for the other two extensions annually.
So in order to open access to more people and to avoid the extra cost, I will not be renewing the .net and .org extensions and I'll be working to adding in the security certificate for the .com address. If you currently use the site with either the .net or .org extensions, I'd urge you to check your bookmark. Also there may be the need for you to add in the 's' in 'https' when the certificate comes into effect.
So if the site all of a sudden doesn't want to load, that's the reason and that is the way you can fix it - should the need arise. .net will expire on 5/17 and .org will expire on 5/14.
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Post by dgt224 on May 11, 2024 0:45:23 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure references to "http://dabeagle.com/" will use HTTPS without any need to edit bookmarks. Most browsers prefer an HTTPS connection if the web site offers it, even if the URL specifies "http:". That's been true for two to four years, depending on the browser, if I recall correctly.
Depending on how much the other domains would cost, it might be worth your while to keep dabeagle.net and dabeagle.org for another year and set them up to redirect to dabeagle.com. That would give the about 1/3 of visitors to your site who get there via ".net" or ".org" a chance to find out about the changes before the site disappears for them. You could also create a custom landing page for the ".net" and ".org" sites that announces the changes and then redirects to dabeagle.com after a few seconds. I suggest this because I have no idea how many visitors to the site would know how to access the forums if dabeagle.net or dabeagle.org suddenly stopped working for them.
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Post by Dabeagle on Jun 3, 2024 11:42:27 GMT -5
My own browser didn't update, but for those of you whom this may affect, saving www.dabeagle.com/ as a bookmark does work. |
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Post by dgt224 on Jun 4, 2024 0:19:41 GMT -5
Interesting. I just tried accessing the site from Firefox and from Chrome, from a saved link with the URL "http://www.dabeagle.com/". Chrome automatically upgraded to "https" without saying anything about it. Firefox successfully loaded the "http" link and shows the insecure-site icon in the address bar. Now that I think about it, I think I tweaked a setting in Firefox a year or two back to keep it from doing the automatic upgrade, because it was interfering with testing on my local web server. I've never figured out how to set up a private HTTPS certificate for web server testing.
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Post by Dabeagle on Jun 4, 2024 14:57:00 GMT -5
I use Firefox as my primary browser and saw what you did. I did a little checking before I fired off an email asking what was going on, as my account shows the certificate to be active.
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Post by dgt224 on Jun 4, 2024 17:46:25 GMT -5
I use Firefox as my primary browser and saw what you did. I did a little checking before I fired off an email asking what was going on, as my account shows the certificate to be active. That has to be something specific to Firefox. The certificate must actually be set up correctly, since Chrome accessed the "https" URL without complaint. |
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