Will this post be about a quest for emotional security? No! It’s all about web site security.

I recently completed several frustrating weeks of time (on and off) to get my author and photography website deemed “secure” with an SSL certificate. What is it? SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, which is “an encryption-based internet security protocol.” An SSL certificate is a digital certificate that authenticates a website’s identity and enables an encrypted connection.

I’d put off buying the certificate because the need for it strikes me as a money-grab by web hosting companies – rather like the kind of security a person receives from payoffs to the Mob. 😊

But now, many web browsers won’t even let people access “unsecure” (or insecure?) websites without going through a lot of clicking acrobatics. My analytics have also been dropping, so I decided to splurge and get the SSL certificate.

I didn’t want to hassle with coding it, so I purchased a more expensive option where I wouldn’t have to deal with that. I thought I could just buy the certificate and that would be it, but NO. I waited several days, and nothing changed with my website. It still came up as unsecure in my browser.

So, I called my web hosting company and asked for help. In a minor miracle, I was actually able to talk to a real person. As an added bonus, he had a sense of humor and he appreciated my humor. All was good. Except for the fact that my website was built on a platform that was too old for the fancy SSL certificate where I didn’t have to do any coding.

Mind you, my web site is only 10 years old, but in technology years, that’s ancient. As a result, the humorous tech guy gave me a partial refund and signed me up for the less-expensive-but-needs-coding certificate. He was also nice enough to add some of the needed code to my site. He said it should begin working within 48 hours.

It didn’t. I won’t bore you with the details, but the fix involved two more phone conversations with my web hosting platform and one hour-long online chat with my domain-name-holding company. Said company had to do a backdoor end-run special code to make the certificate work. It wasn’t something I could have ever done myself.

The process was a pain in the butt and took a good five hours of my life, but anyone who cares to visit my site can now do so with a sense of internet security. I am happy about that. What I am not happy about is that I will have to do this every year!

It might be time for a new web site, but I think I’m gonna eke the rest of my money’s worth out of this one, first. 😊