I'm wondering if the admins would consider changing the site and forum to be served over HTTPS.

 

While HTTPS (the secure version of HTTP) was once primarily used for bank websites and other secure content, it is now starting to be widely used on all types of websites. If you go to websites like Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr, you will notice that you're redirected to the HTTPS version.

 

Google is making an effort right now to encourage more sites to adopt HTTPS. They will soon begin boosting search results from HTTPS sites. In Chrome, for websites that contain login forms (like this forum), they will start to display a "Not Secure" warning message if the site is served over regular HTTP. At some point in the future (probably many years away) they will drop HTTP support entirely in Chrome.

 

The widespread adoption of HTTPS has taken off thanks to a new organization called Let's Encrypt that offers free HTTPS certificates that you can install on your web servers to secure your domain. In the past you would've had to pay around $100 for this certificate.

 

And finally, to address the question some people reading this may have: what benefits do users get out of HTTPS? Well, since traffic is encrypted from the web server to your browser, no one in the middle can see what pages you are browsing. This means that while your ISP, your employer (if you're browsing the site on your phone using work wifi), or the NSA could still see that you are visiting urbanohio.com and doing something there, they aren't able to see what specific pages you're accessing, and they aren't able to capture your username and password for the site. Additionally, you can be sure that no one in the middle has modified the contents of the webpage. Sometimes when you're at a hotel or public wifi access point, they will actually insert ads into the HTML pages you are visiting. With HTTPS, they won't be able to do that.

 

richNcincy[/member] I recently implemented this on my personal sites and am in the process of implementing it for UrbanCincy, so if you have any technical questions, let me know.

Thanks for posting this Travis.  Our server rental is coming up on renewal in February and I planned on upgrading.  Part of this upgrade will include an upgraded control panel for site maintenance and also use of https from that point moving forward.  It just so happens, the new control panel we will be using has the option of installing Let's Encrypt and we will take advantage of the free certificate. 

 

This should begin sometime in January.

Awesome! Thanks.