Concordia Technology Solutions

[BobStebbing]

I noticed that our website can now be accessed through either the https address or the http address. Is this new? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this?

[Tech John]

Certain MemberConnect pages, such as home pages of a site (i.e.: mychurch.memberconnect.net) have always been accessible via either an "unsecure" HTTP or a "secure" HTTPS address.

[Note: one of the changes in the next MemberConnect release is that all public pages of a site will be accessible via HTTP; all private pages (those members need to log on to the site to view) will be https/secure pages.]

The chief difference between an HTTP page and an HTTPS is that the https page is using a web protocol called Secure Socket Layers (SSL) to transport data over the web securely.

In somewhat layman's terms, with HTTP, you sit at your browser and interact with data on a web page. HTTP’s job is to present that data to you, and browsers are the means of doing so. Your web browser, for example, understands HTTP instructions and arranges the data as the site’s designer intended (based on the http code for that page). The browser knows what to do when you click. It uses HTTP to do this. But HTTP cannot do much beyond that: to the HTTP protocol, it does not matter how the data on a site travels from point A to point B (from the web server to your browser). This is a great compromise if you want speed and elegance and are not concerned about security of that page's information. Which makes HTTP ideal for public information on a website (like your church's home page, with location information, directions, and times of services)

But when security is a must, HTTPS works differently, telling each sender and receiver apart from each other. SSL takes the data, going or coming, and encrypts it. This means that SSL uses a mathematical algorithm to hide the true meaning of the data. This algorithm is so complex that it is either impossible or prohibitively difficult to crack. And so the data accessed via an https address is secure (so when a member of your site looks at the calendar page for a group they belong to, that data is transferred from the server to their web browser as secure and encrypted data).

[BobStebbing]

Thank you for that great explanation.

[Tech John]

Glad to be of help; thanks for posting on the CTS forum.