'59 Plymouth Forum

A funny thing happened on the way to the '59 Forum.

In an effort to expand membership, I opened up the Forum to logins from Social Media - Facebook, in particular. However, Facebook only supports integration if the site you log into from Facebook, uses "secure certificates" - that is, an Authorizing Body certifies that a particular site is not malicious, and that they are who they say they are. Furthermore, when registering a secure certificate for a site, all activity between that site and the user's desktop browser is encrypted.

It was a lot of back and forth (and, cost) for me to implement, and I have seen a Facebook user or two show up. But the downside of encryption - it places a significant load on the server for sites like ours, that are top heavy with media (images, videos, pdfs, etc.). You've all seen the broken links, and sluggish performance. You don't get broken links, if your site doesn't use certificates - and, doesn't encrypt traffic.

So, Mea Maxima Culpa. I plan to back out these changes in the next week or so. If Facebook users want an account, they can register through the front door just like everybody else. Instead of going to https://59plymouth... you will be directed to https://59plymouth... - just like before. (The difference is the "s" in "https", which stands for "secure".) One thing you may notice: The "cookie" the browser deposits on your computer when you check "remember my password" will probably go stale, and you will have to log in again, and check that box again.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Mostly, sorry about the bad behavior of the site. I'll make it right.

Dan

Dan, you are much more techno savvy than I, I only vaguely understand what your talking about but I fully understand how difficult it is to keep the site up and running and I want to thank you again for all your hard work, time and care you put in to keeping the forum alive so we few 59 Plymouth owners have a place of our own! You're truly doing a fantastic job. I have never had a difficult time navigating the site or accessing the volumes of information and knowledge within!

Thanks Will! I think I have put things back to where they were. Here's a good test: Go to Chryslers at Carlisle 2018, and see if the content doesn't all eventually fill in, without any broken links as before. I'm working on a quicker presentation too!

If anyone has problems using the site, please contact me - dan@59plymouth.net - and I'll try to facilitate. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Dan

Every things seems to be working just fine.

A little bit of a boring explanation...

When you go to a website, the "URL" - the address of the website - can be prefaced with "http" or https". http means "Hypertext Transfer Protocol". The "s" at the end of "https" means "secure" for those websites that use https.

Secure websites have certificates that guarantee the integrity and authenticity of the website. Once a site is verified, the certificate is purchased, and installed (and all of this is a pain in the butt), all communications between the secure website and the user's desktop browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, etc.) is encrypted so no hacker can observe the traffic and exploit it. These sites use https.

However, encryption requires a lot of computing overhead - both on the server that encrypts it, and the desktop computer that decrypts it. It's the kind of thing you want to have in place when you are passing credit card information. But 100 MB videos? Not so much.

I put a certificate on our website because I was hoping it would drum up more traffic from Facebook users, and Facebook requires you have a certificate to use that integration. But it was killing the website - slow traffic, busted links.

So, I removed it. You can access the website now with plain old "http", no security. Hey! We don't have any top secrets on our website, and there's nothing to purchase with a credit card. Your browser may complain that the site is insecure, or not protected, but not to worry. There's nothing malicious here, except mebbe some cussing about busted knuckles in the Faulkner garage.

You may need to log in again, and let me know if you need help with a password reset. But the site should remember your login, just as before. Just go to

https://59plymouth.net

...and you will be back in business. Sorry for the long-winded explanation!

Dan