https and my radio station website

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hdprene
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https and my radio station website

Post by hdprene »

Though my radio stream is 'just' a hobby, I like 'professional' looks. However, website visitors see the message: 'not secure' in front of the url and I would like to get rid of that. My radio station website is based on a hosting provider. My streams (mp3 & aac+) and the playlist come from another IP address. So it would be nice that the https certificate would allow continuous contact between those two. Until now it seemed a dead-end street of me. If anyone of you solved this, how did others solve that? Thanks for reading and answering. Regards, René
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Jay
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Re: https and my radio station website

Post by Jay »

Some notes that I think you might want to have as you endevor to do this.

HTTPS provides no significant improvement to privacy unless you are allowing your site visitors to exchange private information with you. (ex: site logins) So consider this before undertaking this to get a pad lock and avoid making a considerable investment in time for a questionable UI decision by Chrome. (Not all browsers make such bold and frankly misleading statements as "Not Secure" in the address bar when a site doesn't have SSL).

If you decide you want to do this, you will need to do a couple of things:
First utilize let's encrypt (letsencrypt.org) to get a cert for your domain. This is the free way to do this and they have scripts to auto update your cert. If you utilize a host provider they probably already have something in their panel to initiate this. Another easy route is to put your website behind cloudflare. That's what we do here. You just need to set your domain up with Cloudflare (utilizing their DNS) and then your site can get HTTPS for free with no scripts or any work so long as you send all your traffic through their cloud solution.

This assumes you do not try to play your station content inside your website (you use playlist links to initiate play).

If you want to embed a stream, things get more complicated. Recently Chrome has taken steps to prevent unsecured content from loading in secured pages. So this means you will have to setup an SSL cert for your streaming server. If you do not control your server you will need to coordinate this with your hosting provider. The certificate for your streaming server only need to have a valid domain and a valid SSL certificate for the domain it sits on. It is not a requirement that page assets be hosted under the same domain, just that they have an appropriate SSL cert. So having to sync anything between your SHOUTcast servers and your website is unnecessary.
- Jay
hdprene
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Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 9:27 am
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Re: https and my radio station website

Post by hdprene »

Ok thanks for your answer Jay! I will study on the Cloudflare option! Regards, René
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