Southern Thailand Travel Notes: SSL Connection

Cities and Towns

Parks and Islands

Site

I prefer
Firefox

Have you tried an HTTPS connection?

This hosting account does not have an SSL certificate, so as a test, I set up OVH's SSL Gateway service with this server (thailand.jeffersonscher.com). If you aren't currently using an HTTPS address for this page, try it. The free version of the service can cover a domain (example.com), plus the www subdomain (www.example.com), plus one other subdomain (funstuff.example.com), which is plenty for this test.

I will note that OVH's site is a bit tricky to use because some phrases on English pages appear in French, and it switches between servers with separate logins (www.ovh.com, ca.ovh.com). You should be able to overcome these challenges if you persevere. And one way to read the French documentation is using the Google translation links from this query: site:docs.ovh.com inurl:ssl-gateway.

  1. Try starting from: https://www.ovh.com/us/ssl-gateway/. (You can choose a country other than the U.S. from the top navigation bar of the page if required.) Click "Activate now" under the Free column.
  2. If you do not know your current server's IP address, you can look it up on this page: http://www.kloth.net/services/dig.php. After copy/pasting that into the OVH form, press Enter, or else the Next button doesn't seem to become enabled.
  3. The site should display a $0.00 invoice. Click Continue.
  4. The site should display a login screen. Below the box, there is a link to create an account. Click that, and on the next screen, fill in your details. You should be set up and ready to proceed after that, and get to an agreement screen where you have to confirm that you accept the terms.
  5. Next an Order ($0.00 total) displays, and there is a validation button at the lower left. This leads to a screen with a CAPTCHA code to vaidate the order. Once that is completed, you have finished the steps required to set up your gateway on OVH's site.
  6. Next, OVH will send you numerous email messages. One of them will contain an IP address that you need to enter into your DNS settings for your domain. This will instruct browsers seeking to access your site to go through the OVH gateway instead of accessing your web hosting server directly. The steps for making this change will vary depending on how your DNS services are configured.