GPWA.org migration to https

I'm pleased to (finally) say that all of the background work to convert the GPWA website to use https has been completed and tested over the past month, and today we are flipping the switch and converting the production GPWA.org website. Most of the necessary work has previously been migrated to the production GPWA.org website. Three final steps to complete the conversion are being taken on the production website today:

1) The forum base url is being changed from http://www.gpwa.org to https://www.GPWA.org
2) All page references to http://www.gpwa.org, http://GPWA.org and https://GPWA.org will be automatically redirected to the corresponding page on https://www.GPWA.org.
3) We will convert any instances of links within forum posts to the GPWA website using http to use https.

I will make a follow-on post once those steps have been completed. After that, if you notice any instances of anomalous behavior anywhere on the site, or observe any pages being served without the display of a padlock, please let us know.

Michael

The migration steps noted above were all completed earlier today. We have also performed a small screaming frog run of about 30,000 pages on the site, and have confirmed that within that sample of pages there are no imbedded images using http that would prevent the images from being displayed or the pages from being viewed as fully secured. We do have a number of instances of internal site links still using http, and are working to fix those. In the meantime, however, any such pages are automatically redirected to the same page using https. Once we have fixed those currently known instances we will perform a full crawl of the entire site to determine if there are any additional issues to address.

In the meantime, if anyone notices any issues at all, please let us know.

Thanks,

Michael

Good job Michael.

A small extra. Try to do the www redirect straight to the https.

Now: http://gpwa.org -> http://www.gpwa.org -> https://www.gpwa.org
It should be: http://gpwa.org -> https://www.gpwa.org

Welcome to 2015

Great news!

That's great!
Congratulations!:joy:

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Originally Posted by GPWA Maria

Great news!

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Hello all, i am sure your DA will raise soon. you could also use the cloudflare SSL

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Originally Posted by Christiaan

Good job Michael.

A small extra. Try to do the www redirect straight to the https.

Now: http://gpwa.org -> http://www.gpwa.org -> https://www.gpwa.org
It should be: http://gpwa.org -> https://www.gpwa.org

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Thanks for the observation. That was always our intent, and it is now working that way.

Michael

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Christiaan

Good job Michael.

A small extra. Try to do the www redirect straight to the https.

Now: http://gpwa.org -> http://www.gpwa.org -> https://www.gpwa.org
It should be: http://gpwa.org -> https://www.gpwa.org

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well said :P

Christian stated the following earlier in this thread:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Christiaan

Good job Michael.

A small extra. Try to do the www redirect straight to the https.

Now: http://gpwa.org -> http://www.gpwa.org -> https://www.gpwa.org
It should be: http://gpwa.org -> https://www.gpwa.org

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And I replied as follows:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MichaelCorfman

Thanks for the observation. That was always our intent, and it is now working that way.

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However, in March I discovered there is a reason the redirects should not be setup to operate that way. In order to support HSTS preload, the first redirect of an http url must always be to the exact same host name, but with the protocol changed from http to https. Only after that is one permitted to redirect to a different host name when HSTS records are used. For that reason, we have now changed the example given for the gpwa site so it works as follows:

http://gpwa.org -> https://gpwa.org -> https://www.gpwa.org

For more information on HSTS preload, see the following forum post: Are any of your sites on the https preload list?

Michael

Hello Sam and welcome to the GPWA community. Wishing you the best of luck with your program.

That's great!Congratulations!