We know our Edinburgh Sites are overdue for a makeover. One of the things holding this up is the requirement for SSL certificates. These are the certificates on websites to show the user that you can be trusted and to prove it there’s a wee padlock in the url bar of your browser.
If sites don’t display this wee padlock the site is labeled ‘Not Secure’ and users are warned that the website could be dodgy and might steal your money. Of course we are completely trustworthy and any financial transactions go through secure sites such as Paypal anyway but we still need these certificates to prove that we can be trusted.
Our current server charges a minimum of £50 per year for a SSL certificate, not a lot for one website but we have almost 30 sites, so the cost is prohibited. The SSL also changes the url from html to https meaning that every external link throughout each site has to be re-linked.
The good news is we have found a new server that provides free SSL certificates and we are currently in the process of moving our sites so that we can continue to provide useful and informative sites and good value to our participating businesses.
