Chapter Twelve - Secure Socket Layer

IMPORTANT - It is illegal for site-host or any other provider to share a secure certificate with their clients. Companies whom obtain a secure certificate go through a registration and confirmation process to make sure that the company applying for such a certificate is worthy of one. Because hosting customers do not go through this certification, they are not allowed to represent themselves as doing so by sharing a secure certificate. This is punishable to both the certificate holder and the client using the certificate by fine or other federal legal action.

site-host does offer the SSL option which is the availability to host a certificate for you. This does not include the certificate itself. To obtain a certificate, follow the directions in your control panel. Simply click on the SSL (Secure Server) button.

Normally, any text(such as your credit card number) sent from your browser to the web server is sent as plain text. This means that a hacker could potentially intercept (however unlikely) the information sent from your browser and read it. Therefore, by using the secure server, the information is encrypted before it is sent from your browser. It would be practically impossible for anyone to decrypt it without knowing the key.

The following example uses yourdomain as the name of your domain and any page as the name of the order form or the page you wish to be secure.

Use the following url to call your pages via the secure server.

https://example.com/anypage.html

The above page would be accessed from the normal web server as:

http://example.com/anypage.html

Go to www.yourdomain.com/menu and click on Formmail and follow the instructions for installing your formmail.

If you are calling the formmail through the secure server, your action line and other code will look like the following:

<FORM METHOD=POST ACTION="https://example.com/cgi-bin/formmail.pl">
<input type=hidden name="recipient" value="emailaccount@yourdomain.com">
<input type=hidden name="subject" value="Order">
<input type=hidden name="return_link_url" value="https://example.com/yourpage">
<input type=hidden name="return_link_title" value="Back to Your Page">

The last two lines allow a link back to your main page - thus they get a report of what they ordered and a link.

It's important that you call your order page through a secure URL (HTTPS) in order for it to work properly

Example:

https://example.com/yourorderform.htm

Remember if you need your secure server name or need your secure cgi-bin enabled please email Technical Support and we will provide you with this information.