Mike
Well-Known Member
First of all, thanks to @Duck for alerting me to the site being down as I was in a bad area and thought it might just be my bad internet connection.
Late Friday night, we made the decision to move to put together a new server and move the forum over to it. We moved from an Apache server to a Nginx server. This was for better security, better and faster SSL compatibility, and an overall faster and better server that we can build and grow with. We were already being pushed toward secure servers, and 2017 will bring an even stronger push with some web browsers actually pointing out to the end user that they are not protected. We jumped into the move to SSL (https) early, and want to stay out front because security is important to us. In addition to this, we wanted to change server platforms now, rather than after more things are added to the website that may not have been compatible with the server we moved to. Best to be on the platform you plan on growing with.
Depending on your internet connection, you may or may not notice an increase in speed with page load times with this new server. If your connection is good, and you were paying attention to load times in the past, you will notice we are moving much faster.
Now, for what happened. During the server move, everything transferred over flawlessly and quickly except for one thing. That one thing was the security certificate. There was an incomplete transfer of the certificate info (which is highly encrypted). What began as certificate or security errors showing up on the better web browsers, ultimately resulted in the entire site shutting down.
Your information was never at risk, because we were also running an additional layer of security through our DNS provider, Cloudflare. Our domain name runs through their DNS servers for faster speeds and security.
This afternoon, our server administrator removed the incomplete SSL security certificate and set us up with a brand new one. You can view the certificate information at any time by clicking on the lock by the url in your web browser.
The SSL server test below, shows us once again with an A+ rating.
SSL Server Test: truckersforum.net (Powered by Qualys SSL Labs)
Late Friday night, we made the decision to move to put together a new server and move the forum over to it. We moved from an Apache server to a Nginx server. This was for better security, better and faster SSL compatibility, and an overall faster and better server that we can build and grow with. We were already being pushed toward secure servers, and 2017 will bring an even stronger push with some web browsers actually pointing out to the end user that they are not protected. We jumped into the move to SSL (https) early, and want to stay out front because security is important to us. In addition to this, we wanted to change server platforms now, rather than after more things are added to the website that may not have been compatible with the server we moved to. Best to be on the platform you plan on growing with.
Depending on your internet connection, you may or may not notice an increase in speed with page load times with this new server. If your connection is good, and you were paying attention to load times in the past, you will notice we are moving much faster.
Now, for what happened. During the server move, everything transferred over flawlessly and quickly except for one thing. That one thing was the security certificate. There was an incomplete transfer of the certificate info (which is highly encrypted). What began as certificate or security errors showing up on the better web browsers, ultimately resulted in the entire site shutting down.
Your information was never at risk, because we were also running an additional layer of security through our DNS provider, Cloudflare. Our domain name runs through their DNS servers for faster speeds and security.
This afternoon, our server administrator removed the incomplete SSL security certificate and set us up with a brand new one. You can view the certificate information at any time by clicking on the lock by the url in your web browser.
The SSL server test below, shows us once again with an A+ rating.
SSL Server Test: truckersforum.net (Powered by Qualys SSL Labs)
