Actinic SSL Problem

[grantglendinnin]

Hello.

I am having a few 'duplicate' issues because of the Actinic SSL function.

In 'Business Settings', SSL is switched 'ON' and set to 'Check out pages and customer login only'. To my reckoning this creates the pages https://domain.secured-area.co.uk - which Google has now indexed and crawled nearly half our site, meaning we are running into duplicate issues with half our site being duplicated as http://www.cupargardencentre.co.uk and the other half https:// cupargardencentre. secured-area. co.uk. We have since switched the SSL off, but do not know what to do next. I know the SSL is necessary for secure login and order submission through to Protx, but for now I have turned it off in the hope of Google de-indexing the .secured-area.co.uk pages.

Please can you offer me advice on what to do next?

Kind regards,
Grant Glendinning

[Duncan Rounding]

You don't need SSL to use Protx PSP. The payment cc details are entered on the Protx site not yours.

In fact you don't need SSL at all unless you are collecting cc details to process offline.

[pinbrook]

In addition to what Duncan says, go to Google webmaster tools and tell it the prefered site to index ie cupargardencentre. co. uk and not https:// cupargardencentre. secured-area. co.uk

[grantglendinnin]

Hello. Thanks alot for your advice.

So from what I gather you are advising that we keep SSL switched off - is it okay to have a page such as the login page not secured through encryption? Furthermore, what can we do with regards to deindexing, redirects from cupargardencentre.secured-area.co.uk/ to cupargardencentre.co.uk/ ?

I have also noticed Dobbies using Actinic, their checkout pages are protected by thawte, but have script-like url's,not secured.area.co.uk urls.

Any idea how they overcame that or is that a trick of the trade?

Thanks again

[RuralWeb]

I agree with all of the above and

their checkout pages are protected by thawte, but have script-like url's,not secured.area.co.uk urls.

Dobies does not use actinic so it will be different

[pinbrook]

The OP here seems to be confusing Actinic shared SSL and SSL. They are 2 completely different animals....

Actinic shared SSL is purchased from Actinic and will give you a URL such as yoursite.actinicsecured.co.uk (or similar)

if you buy your own SSL cert such as Thwate, Comodo, Verisign, Geotrust the URL remains on your site and http is replaced with https

Dobbies is an actinic site you can see their Thwate issued cert by typing in https://www dot dobbies dot co dot uk/ index dot html

[grantglendinnin]

Hi. Yes I am led to believe we are using a shared SSL from our server company, Teclan, using an SSL certificate from Equifax. The more expensive option, or so I am told, is also available which will make our site https:// www. cupargardencentre .co.uk - although this would be easier to control robot access by blocking access to the https:// root.

But, now I am contemplating whether or not having SSL enabled is even worth the bother - what are the security risks, other than that of customer login and the contact forms - both of which we do not and never have received customers CC information through.

Many thanks,
Grant

[RuralWeb]

But, now I am contemplating whether or not having SSL enabled is even worth the bother

Its a big expensive waste of time as you are securing WHAT?

I never put the whole site or any part except checkout under SSL as it can also affect your SERPs

[pinbrook]

Some people like to secure the first page of the checkout - this presumably is why you have the SSL. Again some people think they loose a small percentage of sales because this oe page is not secured - I'm yet to see evidence of this myself.

But to stop your site being perceived as a duplicate - if you want to secure bits of it - do what i said in post 3 at Google webmaster tools - end of story...

[grantglendinnin]

But to stop your site being perceived as a duplicate - if you want to secure bits of it - do what i said in post 3 at Google webmaster tools - end of story...

Thanks for your reply. However, Google Webmaster Tools only allows the control of preference between http://domain.com and http://www.domain.com, not https. I set the prefence to http://www. 6 months ago and it has not made a different, we are still indexed for both SSL and non-SSL pages.

Now, I have found that redirecting using the .htaccess file will prevent spiders accessing the site via https. Unfortunately as our SSL pages are then put through our server companies .secured-area. domain, I have requested that our server company submit the modification to the htaccess file on that specific server as I am obviously unable to.

So, my next question would be, does anyone know of a workaround so that, when SSL is enabled in Actinic, 'noindex' meta tags, and perhaps 'nofollow' tags on links are applied automatically?

Thanks for all your suggestions so far.
Grant

[RuralWeb]

I think you are a little confused about what you want to do here - SSL pages are secure and they are normally used because people dont want them indexed so getting them indexed can be a problem.

Also your flyout menus on your site are not working correctly for me so I would check them out

[grantglendinnin]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

Please can you detail which menu's are not working correctly for you..and what the exact problem is?

Thank you.

[pinkequine]

I had SSL working fine on my site until I renewed the certificate.. I got a message on my root cpanel saying the SSL could not be put on a shared IP and it wouldn't install it unless I selected the user "nobody" I did that and then selected the Certificate as the shared one.

Now if I upload the site with SSL on checkout I get a script error. I've spent all day on it now and having read this post am of the mind I just wasted $260 on my Thawte Certificate, since I use Actinic Payments for all my secure payments anyway!

*** sighs ***

[pinbrook]

I had SSL working fine on my site until I renewed the certificate.. I got a message on my root cpanel saying the SSL could not be put on a shared IP and it wouldn't install it unless I selected the user "nobody" I did that and then selected the Certificate as the shared one. Now if I upload the site with SSL on checkout I get a script error. I've spent all day on it now and having read this post am of the mind I just wasted $260 on my Thawte Certificate, since I use Actinic Payments for all my secure payments anyway!

If you have AP you don't need SSL. some people have it to secure first page of checkout or for customer login.

A SSL cert from thwate, comodo etc needs to be on its own IP - it won't work on a shared IP.

Shared SSL - unless its actinic shared - is pretty mangey i'd avoid using it.

You should be able to get a refund from thwate if you bought within the past 7 days.