How to get https on a website?

[Plonking]

Hey all,

Me and some friends of mine will be setting up an online shop for a friend of ours in the near future, and we were wondering - how do you get a secure connection for a website? I've tried googling but am a little confused, and to be honest I'm not really sure where to start !

cheers!

P

[Bifta]

Originally Posted by Plonking

Hey all,

Me and some friends of mine will be setting up an online shop for a friend of ours in the near future, and we were wondering - how do you get a secure connection for a website? I've tried googling but am a little confused, and to be honest I'm not really sure where to start !

cheers!

P

Kingphoenix is probably the best person to answer that one for you.

[Jon M]

If you want a secure site with any degree of credibility, you'll need an SSL certificate issued by a well known and respected authority like : http://www.verisign.com/products-ser...ssl/index.html

This will cost a fair amount mind you, but the investment is worthwhile if you plan to make money from your site.

If you don't know how to set up a secure server, I suggest you talk to your hosting company as they may well have a preferred route.

[Jon M]

Here's a fairly comprehensive guide to SSL/https

http://seeingnetsecurity.com/Welcome...S.HTM#Step_SSL

[SMHarman]

You need to choose your shoping cart software
Knowing this choose a payment gateway provider, Netbanx, Worldpay, HSBC, RBS, blah blah.
Set up your site on your server with your shopping cart software, for this you will need a host that supports the os and DB that your software runs on, most use MySQL and Linux so it's pretty easy to find one. King Phoenix Iweb solutions would be a good port of call.

Integrage your site with the payment gateway, you provide them with files for your checkout pages that they host on their secure server so your site passes the payment amount to their server, their server takes the card details and processes it and then confirms.

Unless you are planning to set up the next Amazon then this is the approach to take.

IWeb seem to offer HTTPS (or SSL - Secure Socket Layer)
Yes we can install an SSL certificate for you, there is an
installation charge of £15.
Or we can purchase one for you and install it this will entail a
yearly fee of £100

But the point of one of these is to integrate into a checkout and verify process. A point that will need a credit card authorisation agent anyway, pass the problem onto them, it's what they take their 2-8% for anyway.

My hosting service http://www.hosts.co.uk/ offers a package "startup host plus" that includes access to their secure server system for £7.99 pcm or £89.99 p/a there's also a business £16.99 pcm or £189 p/a with higher bandwidth etc.

This allows you to use secure pages without needing to spend out on buying a certificate yourself.

[Gareth]

Just outta interest (cause I'm a nosey git )..... what sort of stuff you gonna be selling on your site?

[KingPhoenix]

Originally Posted by Plonking

Hey all,

Me and some friends of mine will be setting up an online shop for a friend of ours in the near future, and we were wondering - how do you get a secure connection for a website? I've tried googling but am a little confused, and to be honest I'm not really sure where to start !

cheers!

P

Hi Plonking, basically you will need an ssl certificate and a dedicated IP Address. You can get free SSL certs which do the same job almost but they dont look proffessional, as you will get a pop up saying that its from an un-trusted source and stuff like that.... If you want us to quote for the entire web-hosting side of it (including your HTTPS fees etc )

KP

Originally Posted by Graham

My hosting service http://www.hosts.co.uk/ offers a package "startup host plus" that includes access to their secure server system for £7.99 pcm or £89.99 p/a there's also a business £16.99 pcm or £189 p/a with higher bandwidth etc.

This allows you to use secure pages without needing to spend out on buying a certificate yourself.

This is very true, I-Web do the same, but for alot less than that per month

But the only let down of it is the URL.... Our share secure url is secure-vault.co.uk

So your shop would be

https://secure-vault.co.uk/yourusern...shop/index.php Which doesnt look too proffessional.

We can offer discounted SSL certs too (we dont advertise this yet) but if your interested contact sales@i-websolutions.co.uk

Regards
KP

[Plonking]

Originally Posted by GDW1975

Just outta interest (cause I'm a nosey git )..... what sort of stuff you gonna be selling on your site?

lol.. we're not actually sure, but its costumes and props and designer fashion stuff made by a load of creative types we know

[Plonking]

Hey all,

Cheers for the info It makes a heckuva lot more sense than it did a while ago...

I'll get in touch with the people who want the shop and probably hassle you guys again when I get confused again!

Cheers for the help y'all!

P

[Frank]

Originally Posted by Plonking

Me and some friends of mine will be setting up an online shop for a friend of ours in the near future, and we were wondering - how do you get a secure connection for a website? I've tried googling but am a little confused, and to be honest I'm not really sure where to start !

Heya,

Not to pour water on the fire, but if you don't understand the basics of setting up an SSL server then you shouldn't really be doing this step yourself. As SMHarman explains, the steps to setting up a decent e-commerce site, from scratch, aren't exactly the simplest.

If you don't know what an SSL certificate is then my guess is that you will have trouble integrating any e-commerce store with the payment gateway, and on an SSL host. Obviously we'll help as much as possible

Originally Posted by KingPhoenix

But the only let down of it is the URL.... Our share secure url is secure-vault.co.uk

So your shop would be

https://secure-vault.co.uk/yourusern...shop/index.php Which doesnt look too proffessional.

True, but the same also applies to hosts.co.uk, according to Grahams post

[KingPhoenix]

Originally Posted by Frank

True, but the same also applies to hosts.co.uk, according to Grahams post

This is the point i was making the fact that a shared SSL cert URL would be the main url followed normally by a username followed by a directory structure etc......

so it doesnt look proffessional or anything....

We are currently able to offer a geotrust certificate (full - not chained) for around £40 a year

[SMHarman]

As a quick and less painful way of starting trading you can always use all in one providers, we started our first online store using Demon Commerce, this provides the store database, checkout functionality and sets up a merchant account for credit card processing.

It does restrict you to all the above and as time goes on you may want to escape as turnover increases and functionality becomes limiting, but as a start it is not a bad package.

http://www.demon.net/products/demoncommerce/

http://www.demon.net/helpdesk/produc...e/d-faq1.shtml

[Plonking]

Hey everybody,

Thanks for the extra info - I've learnt a great deal already The vague original plan I had in mind was to use oscommerce (with good old I-web and oscommerce comes with fantastico) with a secure connection on top, but that demon net offer also looks quite good as an alternative as well.

Frank's made a good point about me being a bit out of my depth in all this;the payment gateway stuff sounds pretty confusing, but hopefully some googling and research will help me get my head round it

Mind you, compared to where I was in February when I first bought some proper hosting.. I've learnt a great deal in the last 6 months, so hopefully the coming months will continue that trend as well

P

Originally Posted by Plonking

Hey everybody,

Thanks for the extra info - I've learnt a great deal already The vague original plan I had in mind was to use oscommerce (with good old I-web and oscommerce comes with fantastico) with a secure connection on top, but that demon net offer also looks quite good as an alternative as well.

Frank's made a good point about me being a bit out of my depth in all this;the payment gateway stuff sounds pretty confusing, but hopefully some googling and research will help me get my head round it

Mind you, compared to where I was in February when I first bought some proper hosting.. I've learnt a great deal in the last 6 months, so hopefully the coming months will continue that trend as well

P

Thank you for starting this interesting thread, I'm sure a lot of people have been educated by it, I know I have