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🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Aug 19, 2018 05:05 PM UTC:

I was experimenting with Cloudflare's "Always use HTTPS" option, but some pages were having problems, because they were sending form data from an HTTPS page to an HTTP page. This site has an SSL certificate through Cloudflare, and I would like to switch over to using HTTPS, but I have to fix the forms before I can do this.

HTTPS offers more security than HTTP, it enables the use of HTML / 2, which will speed up the site, and it should improve the ranking of the site in the search engines. But there are lots of pages with lots of forms to fix before this is viable. There may also be some glitches along the way.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Aug 20, 2018 05:15 PM UTC:

Having started on this, it seems to me that things would go more easily if all internal links were relative links. But having part of the site in a separate subdomain makes this impossible. Links between the main site and the subdomain have to be full links, and full links have to either HTTP or HTTPS. Relative links have the benefit of conforming to whatever the page being viewed is.

I looked into this further this morning, and the pages I read argued that putting everything on one domain is better for SEO. A subdomain is treated like a separate site, and it does not inherit the authority of the main site. Given that the main site and the subdomain are interrelated, sharing links and images, and that the main site has a good amount of authority that I would like the play part of the site to benefit from, I think it would be a good idea to replace the subdomain with a subdirectory. The subdomain is already physically located in a subdirectory, and 301 redirects could be used to direct subdomain links to the subdirectory.

Once that is done, I could make all internal links relative. This would get rid of the HTTPS links I started to add yesterday. And when all links are relative, it would be a lot easier to convert the whole site to HTTPS at once.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Aug 20, 2018 05:30 PM UTC:

But first a test. This is diagram designer diagram, linked to /play/pbm/drawdiagram.php?set=motif, which is a relative link to a subdirectory instead of the usual link to the subdomain. If this works, then I should expect that the image links to the subdomain will not break when I 301 redirect them to the subdirectory.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Aug 20, 2018 06:02 PM UTC:

That was successful. The first step is to comment out the 301 redirects of the play subdirectory to the play subdomain. That has worked, and the play subdirectory is now showing up. Before proceeding further, I need to test pages with the play subdirectory to see if this breaks anything.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Aug 21, 2018 01:00 PM UTC:

I have now copied the play header and footer to new files, and I have rewritten the original play header and footer scripts to check the server name and to use the header and footer for the domain of the page. So, if it appears on the main domain, it will use the header and footer for the main domain. This will give me the opportunity to add features from the play header and footer that were included for Game Courier to the main header and footer.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Aug 27, 2018 10:30 PM UTC:

I added code to .htaccess to 301 redirect the play subdomain to the main domain, and I configured Cloudflare, which is used for DNS, to always use HTTPS and to rewrite HTTP URLs to HTTPS. I previously made various changes to Game Courier and to pages with links to Game Courier to use URLs with the play subdirectory in the main domain. The play subdomain will still work, but the pages it points to will have their URLs rewritten to the main domain.

If anything appears broken, let me know. Or if you're an editor, and it is something minor like a broken URL, you can try fixing it yourself.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Sep 4, 2018 02:14 PM UTC:

When I have "Always use HTTPS" enabled in Cloudflare, this site will not load on my Kindle Touch's browser. Since I want to be able to use the site on an e-ink device, I may have to leave this disabled. The site will still work with HTTPS in an up-to-date browser, but if Amazon will not update the browser in the Kindle Touch, there is nothing I can do on my own to update it.


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