SSL and Actinic

[zee_b]

I'm interested in getting an SSL certificate for my site for various reasons but mainly to provide customer confidence. I've read info on various SSL sites, but none specific to Actinic (Catalog V7). With payments taken thru Protx,Paypal etc , would i be right to assume i dont need it on the payment pages?

So i assume its better if used on segments where customers input other personal info such as address details & e-mail form?

How does SSL work? How does one apply it in actinic, literally? The posts ive read on here appear to focus on faults - so does it mean it doesnt work well?

Apologies if this thread is a bit vague OR in the wrong section - im a relative newbie.



Zee

[Charles Bastari]

I bought a completely unnecessary SSL certificate for the sole purpose of making buyers feel warm and fuzzy. I put the seal on the home page where they would have to see it right off and again on the page where they click to go to the payment service provider's site.

I believe the 'focus on the faults' you've read about were probably about shared SSL situations. Get your own certificate.

I don't know how it works where you are, but in the States your host would send you an encrypted Certificate Request which you would forward to the SSL provider. They in turn would send you the actual certificate files and the bit of code that is, in effect, your display seal.

You forward the certificate files to your host and they install them on their server. You insert the bit of code into the code of the page where you want the seal to appear. When the page loads, the code you inserted not only displays the seal, it actually 'calls' for the seal credentials, which are on the host's server. The credentials can be viewed by rolling over or clicking on the seal.

If you don't know code, best you follow this thread. It spells out my particular predicament about the placement of the seal code on my pages. There are some great people here and you will get assistance if you need it.
http://community.actinic.com/showthr...harles+bastari

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Charles

[zee_b]

Charles,

Thanks for your response and the link.

Why do you feel it was completely unneccessary?

[Charles Bastari]

Because nothing requiring me to be secure leaves my site. The instant a customer clicks to go to the payment service provider's site, security becomes the responsibilty of the payment service provider. The customer only enters name, address, etc. on my site. That's the information secured by the payment provider when it's in transit to them. Credit card information isn't entered until the customer in actually on the payment provider's secure server.

If I were an auction site, for example, and received private bids for items I would want my entire site to be secure so the bidder's confidential information would be encrypted on the way to me.

On the other hand, the seal does provide credibility verification for the customer. They know they are dealing with a trustworthy merchant. As I understand it, sometime this year a new browser standard will go into affect. The background in the address bar for all browsers will be color coded to give the status of a site, i.e. green or gold for secure or unsecure and red for totally taboo.