Skip to main content

Get Your Store Ready for HTTPS

You probably received an email from Google announcing that starting in October of 2017, sites that cannot be accessed via HTTPS will be flagged in Chrome as not secure. This is part of Google's push to make the entire Internet secure. To answer this call, Yahoo is working hard on making HTTPS available to all stores and it should be available shortly; definitely well before the deadline set by Google. In some cases, stores will simply be able to flip a switch and make their site secure (conforming). However, other stores, most notably highly customized ones will need extra effort making sure they are ready for the switch.

What if your site is switched to HTTPS but it is not entirely secure?

If - when it becomes available - you switch your site over to HTTPS but not all parts of the site are secure, visitors to the site will still see a note informing them that the site is not secure. They may, and often will, also receive popups warning them of insecure content and asking if they want to continue - a sure way to turn the vast majority of visitors away.

What parts of the site can potentially be non-secure?

Once the switch is available, the main pages of the store will be secure. However, assets used inside the page also need to be secure. The product images - and indeed all images you upload into the editor will be taken care of. Other files linked from the "Files" area of the store editor will probably be secure, but that depends on how such files are linked into your site. If they use hard-coded non-secure (http:) links, then they will NOT be secure. Images used inside otherwise secure CSS and JS files may or may not be secure, again, depending on how those are referenced from within those files.
Also, forms used anywhere in the site (search, newsletter signup, etc.) all need to point to secure locations otherwise they will be flagged as non-secure. A notable example is the built in store search. If you are using the legacy yahoo store search you will have to upgrade to the newer version.
Finally, any third party scripts or tools your site might make use of, which are not secure, will have to be secured as well, but for those you'll most likely have to contact the vendor whose code it is. We will point those out to you if we find them in your store.

How can you find out what parts of the site will pose a problem?

You can start with third party tools such as customer reviews, customer account management systems, etc, by contacting the vendors those tools are from to make sure they can be upgraded to be secure. If you have the legacy Yahoo store search, upgrade it - or have it upgraded - to the new version. Don Cole of Your Store Wizards put together a testing tool that can alert you if your site is most likely to be ready or not for the switch. This tool is available here. But the most precise way to tell whether your site is ready to be secure or not is the yet-to-be-released HTTPS testing tool from Yahoo. This tool will temprorarily switch the store editor into secure mode so it will immediately show an expert what parts of the page or pages are not secure and, therefore, require attention.

What's next?

For your peace of mind, order our Secure Store Preparation Service now. We will process these in the order in which they are received, as soon as Yahoo Store's HTTPS testing tool is available. We will make sure all parts of the site are secure and ready for the switch, and we will identify any third party tool you may be using now that will need to be secured by the vendor who installed it (please note, we are not responsible for any charges third party vendors might assess for securing their own tools or add-ons.)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Catalog Request

You may have noticed that both the Catalog Request and Catalog Request Confirmation pages are now customizable through Checkout Manager. If you have already customized your Checkout Manager pages (or had someone customize them for you), and would like to have the same custom look applied to your Catalog Request and Catalog Request Confirmation forms, all you have to do is this: Go into Checkout Manager, click Page Configuration and then look at how your Shipping, Billing, Review, etc. pages are set up; in particular, check if you have the Top Navigation and Left Navigation enabled. Click over to the Catalog Request tab, and make sure you have the same settings next to Top Navigation and Left Navigation. Don't forget to hit Save or Save & Preview , otherwise your changes will be lost. Click over to the Catalog Request Confirmation tab and there too, make sure you have the same settings next to Top Navigation and Left Navigation (so if those are enabled on your other checkout p

CPR for a Yahoo Store on Google's Supplemental Index

Recently a client of mine came to me and said that most of his store pages disappeared from Google, and he did not do anything to make this happen. I was a bit skeptical, so I went to Google, did a search on his store, and sure enough, there were only two pages indexed, his home page and his site map (ind.html) page. The rest were in the supplemental results, which means that Google thought the rest of the pages were not much different than these two pages. When I looked at the supplemental results, the little excerpts under each link were exactly the same, and I also noticed that what Google showed under each result was actually text from the ALT tags of the header image. I looked at some of these pages in my client's store, and they were actually different. This was a bit puzzling, but then I thought perhaps Google saw that the header and left navigation was the same throughout the site (which is pretty normal), but that the text that made each page different was too far down ins

Auto-update Copyright Year

This is one of those minor, recurring questions I'm always asked (each year): to update the copyright year in sites. Whether this is the "right thing" to do or not I don't know, but here is how you can make it automatic: First, go to the Variables page (these instructions are for Yahoo! Stores), and do a search for the word "copyright" or the year that's currently displayed next to your copyright message. If you can't find it there, chances are you have a custom template and the copyright message might be coming from some place else. In that case, you'll have to track it down, but because custom templates can be set up in any which way, unfortunately you'll be on your own. Assuming you found it, replace the year with this JavaScript code: <script>document.write(new Date().getFullYear())</script> Hit Update and you should be all set!