NOV 7, 22 .. THIS POST WILL MEAN SOMETHING TO KAROLYNN AND TO ANDREJ ..

By Cap Chastain November 7, 2022 Andrej, HTTP / HTTPS, Karolynn 8 Comments

I have absolutely no false illusions here. Two, or maybe a few more, of you will plow through this Post. So be it because I am writing it for two specific associates and I know full well that some others reading along here will also understand (namely Michael D in Lake Havasu City) what this is all about.

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THANK YOU KAROLYNN !!

Once in awhile, from time to time, out of the blue, a gift arrives right smack dab into my lap. Unasked for, totally unexpected, Ker-Pow, a real gift.

Sometime in the past year, I asked my Webmaster Andrej how we could make our site here more secure. To be more specific for you non-computer, non-Information Tech, readers who have no idea what the four letters (http) that precede most internet addresses means, below is your answer.

HTTP is a protocol for fetching resources (surfing the Web) such as HTML documents. It is the foundation of any data exchange on the Web and it is a client-server protocol, which means requests are initiated by the recipient, usually a Web browser.

The four letters HTTP mean HyperText Transfer Protocol, an application-layer protocol for transmitting hypermedia documents, such as HTML.

Now IF you want your website to have an extra layer of security added to it, you get it secured with Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) which is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) you just read about above. HTTPS is used for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet.

It took Andrej and myself, working as a team, to finally get our website here fully secured with HTTPS. 

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Enter into the equation here Patti’s friend Karolynn. Just the day before yesterday when she, Karolynn, left me the below comment on our NOV 5, 22 Post :

Cap. My computer says that babakaps.net is Secure (shows the padlock). However, your other site says it is not secure and does not show the padlock. Can you fix that?

I repled to Karolynn as follows :

Karolynn .. This website, the one I call dotnet .. I ” own ” along with my webmaster Andrej. It is serviced by Midphase and the software that my site is running is WordPress. As the owner of my site I pay an annual fee. Thus Karolynn, since I pay a financial cost, I have certain abilities to make changes to the basic WordPress software program. Recently Andrej and myself upgrated the site to https (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) and as such I have an added degree of security.

My three other websites (one of which you are familiar with .. bobbacaps.blogspot.com) are owned and programmed and managed by the Google Corporation. As such, apparently, Google has not deemed it necessary to make their own sites HTTPS. I am not sure how I can proceed with this added security with Google, a somewhat large (enormous) corporation (who are often making changes to the software without asking any of us what we think or want) that can be frustrating.

So I am NOT (at least as of this moment Karolynn) able to make this upgrade. I cannot fix it. Thanks for your comment and interest in our website Karolynn. Cap and Patti

And then I got to thinking !

Why-Oh-Why wouldn’t Google itself  sanction and promote the universal use of HTTPS on its own websites ?

So I went on-line and I ” Googled ” .. How do I get HTTPS on my Google Blogspot Website .

Volia ! In less than a nano-second Google told me :

Turn on HTTPS for your blog

If you want visitors to access your blog over HTTPS, you can turn on HTTPS and HTTPS redirect.

There are three main benefits to using HTTPS instead of HTTP to access your blog:

  • It helps check that your visitors open the correct website and aren’t being redirected to a malicious site.
  • It helps detect if an attacker tries to change any data sent from Blogger to the visitor.
  • It adds security measures that make it harder for other people to listen to your visitors’ conversations, track their activities, or steal their information.

Important: If you use CAA Records on your custom domain, add a record for letsencrypt.org, or Blogger won’t create or renew your SSL certificate

To turn on HTTPS for your custom domain blog:

  1. Sign in to Blogger.
  2. In the top left, click the Down arrow Down arrow.
  3. Select the blog to update.
  4. In the left menu, click Settings and then Basic.
  5. On the right, under “HTTPS” and “HTTPS Availability,” select Yes.

So I did exactly what Google told me to do (see above).

And?

All of my three Google Blogspot Websites are now HTTPS protected.

From start to finish it took me, at the max, ten (10) easy minutes.

THANK YOU KAROLYNN for the gift of HTTPS on my google websites.

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I wrote the below comment to Karolynn ..

Karolynn, now when you go to bobbacaps.blogspot.com you WILL see the padlock and the HTTPS indicator ..

THANKS TO YOU .. THANKS 100% TO YOU KAROLYNN .. I now have all three of my Google Blogspot Websites secured ..

THANK YOU .. THANK YOU .. THANK YOU .. THANK YOU .. THANK YOU .. THANK YOU .. THANK YOU .. THANK YOU .. Karolynn !!!

THANK YOU KAROLYNN for the gift of HTTPS on my google websites.

Cap and Patti ..

If I wasn’t feeling pretty good, I would never be able to write and publish a post such as this!

8 thoughts on “NOV 7, 22 .. THIS POST WILL MEAN SOMETHING TO KAROLYNN AND TO ANDREJ ..”

    1. Cap Chastain

      Smiling Linda !! For me, I consider myself basically a NON-TECHNICAL person, it was truly a victory to pull this HTTPS business off !! Oh Yes, compared to my 86 year old peers. I AM HIGH-TECH Linda. Thanks for your ongoing support Linda !! Cap and Patti too

      Reply ↓
  4. Michael d

    Congratulations my dear friend, Cap! You are now ‘more than’ on your way to being a tech-geek. And you’ve been an eager-to-learn student since I can remember your first adventures/forays into the computer world. I once had my earliest computer teachers drill it into us that our goal was to become masters OVER the computer and it’s fundamentals and foundations. When we began the first computers controlled US! Now, you are quick on the way to being the master, manipulating all of it’s variables to do what you’ve instructed IT to do! And thank you so much for working with Andre a master and guru to lock down your blog sites with HTTPS! It’s vital in today’s world. I must say….it’s ’bout time! lol Yes, HTTP is the programming language that allows the user end to ‘hop’ from router to router (often across borders and around the globe) to reach it’s destination….the computer or server on the opposite end. And hopefully, with a ‘handshake’ and welcome the two ‘ends’ can, with as much security begin the exchange of data. It’s magic…but it’s not! I hope it has broadened your life experiences. It certainly has mine! Just for a fun exercise start using the ‘CMD’ prompt and using the ‘ping’ command to test if a connection is verified to the end computer, and the time it takes to do the round trip! There’s so much more which I find intriguing…DNS tables, routing, protocols, and a plethora of programming languages still are only a part of what makes our digital age work…OR NOT! Now, Microsoft won’t allow users to install Windows 11 unless they have a computer capable of some pretty stringent hardware demands! Oi, vey! As Marie Carpenter once sang….”We’ve only just begun…..” lol
    Have a Truly Blessed HTTPS kinda day, my dear friends!
    Love always,
    Michael

    Reply ↓

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