The ANARC website has been available using the http protocol for most of it’s life. However, this means that all the text and content is transmitted over the internet as plain text. From it’s location on a webserver all the way to your browser on your device all the text can be read by anyone.
In one sense this doesn’t really matter very much. We are just a radio club website. Nothing is really secret here!
Most larger websites use the https protocol. This is the secure version of http. When a connection is made the contents are encrypted during the journey from the website to your browser. Https is used by shopping sites and banks to secure the connection. It’s so important that search engines like Google are prioritising sites that are protected by https. Effectively your site moves down the the search engine ranks if you don’t use https.
To implement the https protocol on this website I use a certificate from SSL For Free. This is a project that allows all websites to get a security certificate at very low cost. In this case free.
So as of today you can access anarc.net as https://anarc.net securely. (It’s not quite totally secure because some of the images get sent unecrypted).
The certificate lasts for 90 days and I renew it to keep it going.
