www.mcmiddleearth.com will soon have all of its connections encrypted with https://
You don't have to do anything as a user, but this blog post is to elaborate a bit more of what this actually means, and what the consequences will be.
Google regularly makes changes to its algorithm to change how websites rank on their search engine. As of now, websites that offer a mobile compliant version get their results higher in the ranking. A few months ago they announced that they would favor websites that only serve https as well. Ofcourse https has way more benefits than just a mere search engine ranking boost, it also protects every data you send to us, essentially eliminating a middle man of snooping or intercepting your data. This might not be especially useful to messages concerning Minecraft, though it is important when there's privacy sensitive information being handled, such as financial or personal information (or if what you write is considered classified).
Most modern devices and browsers all support https, so this change won't leave anyone outside of the community. You will notice that the connection is secure and encrypted to the website with the https:// prefix and green adress bar. Users who rely on Minecraft Middle Earth uri's will simply be redirected to the https:// equivalent, so bookmarks don't have to be changed.
Why the change
https is being more and more important, and even enforced by other companies. For example, Paypal is forcing its communication through https only soon. In order to have continue the donation system to work automatically, I have to support https for the 'paypal answers back' signal to update the amounts and progress on the meter. Security-Related Changes Required to Avoid Service Disruption | PayPal & Braintree | Developer - Blog
I also explained how this will positively affect our google ranking, and how it secures your communication and data transmission even more.
External sources
However, https doesn't like 'mixed content', which means that if you load the website, it asks for all the files required to show you the website, server on the domain mcmiddleearth.com
If it encounters content from a 'insecure' source, such as external image linking, it will warn you about this and show the website as 'not secure', just because there's something external being shown on your page.
Solution
This problem can be overcome by using a link and image proxy, which is built-in Xenforo. Imagine that you post something from imgur or min.us
Instead of referring to the external site, our website will download and host the image locally, avoiding the mixed-content problem alltogether. However this is also prone to a problem. Images which are stored this way on the server, will only be saved if there's enough requests. It basically prunes images that aren't used to save space. This could prove troublesome for resources and guides, so in that case it would be better to host your images through our Media Manager or as in-line attachment.
You don't have to do anything as a user, but this blog post is to elaborate a bit more of what this actually means, and what the consequences will be.
Google regularly makes changes to its algorithm to change how websites rank on their search engine. As of now, websites that offer a mobile compliant version get their results higher in the ranking. A few months ago they announced that they would favor websites that only serve https as well. Ofcourse https has way more benefits than just a mere search engine ranking boost, it also protects every data you send to us, essentially eliminating a middle man of snooping or intercepting your data. This might not be especially useful to messages concerning Minecraft, though it is important when there's privacy sensitive information being handled, such as financial or personal information (or if what you write is considered classified).
Most modern devices and browsers all support https, so this change won't leave anyone outside of the community. You will notice that the connection is secure and encrypted to the website with the https:// prefix and green adress bar. Users who rely on Minecraft Middle Earth uri's will simply be redirected to the https:// equivalent, so bookmarks don't have to be changed.
Why the change
https is being more and more important, and even enforced by other companies. For example, Paypal is forcing its communication through https only soon. In order to have continue the donation system to work automatically, I have to support https for the 'paypal answers back' signal to update the amounts and progress on the meter. Security-Related Changes Required to Avoid Service Disruption | PayPal & Braintree | Developer - Blog
I also explained how this will positively affect our google ranking, and how it secures your communication and data transmission even more.
External sources
However, https doesn't like 'mixed content', which means that if you load the website, it asks for all the files required to show you the website, server on the domain mcmiddleearth.com
If it encounters content from a 'insecure' source, such as external image linking, it will warn you about this and show the website as 'not secure', just because there's something external being shown on your page.
Solution
This problem can be overcome by using a link and image proxy, which is built-in Xenforo. Imagine that you post something from imgur or min.us
Instead of referring to the external site, our website will download and host the image locally, avoiding the mixed-content problem alltogether. However this is also prone to a problem. Images which are stored this way on the server, will only be saved if there's enough requests. It basically prunes images that aren't used to save space. This could prove troublesome for resources and guides, so in that case it would be better to host your images through our Media Manager or as in-line attachment.
