Hey everyone, it’s Whatever Wednesdays again. Today is just a short post about “Secure Socket Layer (SSL)”.

What’s Secure Socket Layer (SSL)?

Well, without getting too crazy, it’s just basically another way to help people tell whether a website is legitimate or not. If you look in your URL bar you’ll see something like this:

See that little “lock” in front of my website URL of seniorresident.com? That designates that my site has been SSL verified and is “legitimate”. Previous to today it would have an exclamation point and said “Not secure”.

This became important back in 2018… and I had planned to do it along time ago, but I kept forgetting. It’s not free, and well, this website is just a hobby so I didn’t think too much of it.

However, not having an SSL certificate basically means your site isn’t secure, and potentially could be a scam. Having an SLL ensures that the web site you’re browsing is encrypted and securely transmitted.

As such, not having an SSL may make your rank lower than what it could be when it comes to Google searches and so on. Basically, I’ve waited much too long on this and I have no one to blame but myself. That said, it’s taken care of now and there is a nice little lock next to my URL, and if you scroll down to the bottom of my web page you’ll see this:

This basically just designates that my site is SSL verified by GoDaddy, which is my domain and hosting service.

At the very least, for any new visitors, my site will be “secure”. Like I said, I should have done this a long time ago, but I kept putting it off and forgetting.

Anything else?

Yea.

If anyone is interested, I found a coupon for 94% off your first year of SSL certification if you do it through GoDaddy which is:

CJCSSLR389

I don’t have any financial relationship with GoDaddy. In fact, if you’re just starting out and haven’t chosen a host yet, you may want to go with other hosting sites that give you SSL “for free”. You can just google “free SSL hosting” to find some. Off the top of my head, Bluehost does it for free.

However, for those of us who already use GoDaddy, getting SSL through them is just “easier” so go ahead and use that code if you plan to do it. This is current as of September 2019, but if you find this some other time, just try googling “godaddy ssl promo code” and see what you get.

Whatever happened to monetization?

Um, I’m still not sure what I’m doing yet. I thought I might be able to sort things out in this last two weeks or so I had off. However, for someone reason I’m just kind of at a “failure to launch” stage.

Part of it is that because this is a hobby and I don’t really want to make it into a job, because then I have to be committed and responsible. If I’m going to commit and take responsibility, it may turn out to be much more work than I really want to do. I can’t just kind of “half do things” if it’s a job. That’s just the kind of personality I have.

Another part of it is fear of the unknown in terms of monetization and management of the website. That said, it is an opportunity to learn something new, once again, so I may end up pushing forward with it. Perhaps my getting SSL and committing more money to it is a step in the right direction.

We’ll see.

TL;DR

SSL is important.

Monetization still up in the air.

When a hobby becomes a job, then there is commitment and responsibility…

… and I don’t do things halfway.

-Sensei

Agree? Disagree? Questions, Comments and Suggestions are welcome.

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