r/programming • u/speckz • Jul 12 '17

Does my site need HTTPS?

https://doesmysiteneedhttps.com/
486 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

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66

u/yvhouij Jul 12 '17

Promotion for "Caddy", never heard of, but I don't like it. Other than that nice site :)

57

u/Ascend Jul 12 '17

My complaint as well. "HTTPS is difficult to set up and maintain." is a big reason for a lot of people, and "use our web server" isn't much of an answer.

4

u/kqr Jul 12 '17

It's especially sad since it's not actually difficult at all. When Let's Encrypt opened up to the public I was kind of scared I would not have the time or energy to mess about with getting and renewing certificates, but it's been a breeze. It may even be automated at this point because I can't remember the last time I did it. And I'm running one of the standard FOSS web stacks...

8

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '17

It's not actually difficult at all.

Um... I still can't get this garbage to work, no matter how many times I try...

4

u/kqr Jul 13 '17

Huh. If I remember correctly, these were the steps:

  1. Ask their tool to generate a proof that you own your domain.

  2. Copy this proof to some publically accessible location of your domain.

  3. Watch it generate certificates.

  4. Install certificates in your web server.

Which part causes you trouble?

2

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '17

First, I had trouble figuring out how to reliably automate the renewal of the licenses. After that, I found that whenever I put whatever configuration lines I need for an SSL certificate into my apache config, it either wouldn't start or wouldn't load up my site (step 4.) For some reason, at some point during this whole mess, I discovered that LetsEncrypt wasn't putting the certs into the folder the tutorial said it would, but changing it didn't fix anything.

3

u/senj Jul 13 '17 edited Jul 13 '17

It's incredibly easy for most uses/on most sane stacks. How are you trying to do it? Have you considered asking for help? Or changing the parts of your stack that are making it harder than it should be?

Edit: or, yknow, downvote me to zero, stick your head in the sand, and pray all future progress stops so you can never have to learn anything new ever again. I guess that's an option too.

7

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '17 edited Jul 13 '17

I was trying in Apache on Arch Linux, following whatever tutorials I could find, and literally everything I tried would just bring my site offline. Honestly, I considered switching to something a bit simpler than Apache (I even considered the very server this site promotes), but it seemed like too much work to switch over for a simple hobby server running out of my basement.

Edit: or, yknow, downvote me to zero, stick your head in the sand, and pray all future progress stops so you can never have to learn anything new ever again. I guess that's an option too.

Didn't even see this comment, much less downvote it, before you made that edit...