Apple II Bits

A year ago this month, I added SSL certificates to all my websites. Be it the ease and affordability of doing via Let’s Encrypt, the paranoia of avoiding unencrypted communications inspired by Snowden, or the improvement to search-engine ranking provided by Google, it was an effortless and valuable addition all my sites.

Except this one. I spoke on the Retro Computing Roundtable and wrote on this blog about how evolving Web standards sometimes mean older technology is no longer grandfathered. In this case, no Apple II computer or browser currently supports (or may even be capable of accessing) SSL-encrypted websites. Even though my Google Analytics showed no such machines were accessing Apple II Bits, I was hesitant to disconnect this blog from the computer that inspired it.

Since then, Google stepped up its incentive to offer HTTPS encryption: starting later this month, any page or site with a text field — be it a contact form or a search box — that isn’t encrypted will display a warning in Google Chrome. Whether this decision is reasonable or proper can be debated, but I can’t ignore its consequences. Among visitors to this site, Chrome is the most popular, constituting 45% of sessions. For thousands of users to have a negative experience so I can accommodate a potential or even nonexistent audience is foolhardy.

Fortunately, as reader mmphosis commented, it’s not an either/or proposition: a website can be configured to support both HTTP and HTTPS. This weekend, that’s exactly the change I made to Apple II Bits’ configuration. The canonical default for this website is still HTTP, but if you type HTTPS into your browser window (or have the EFF’s excellent HTTPS Everywhere browser plugin enabled), you can now access the site via HTTPS as well.

In the future, I may investigate reversing those roles and making HTTPS the default but HTTP an option. In the meantime, I hope this compromise between old and new technologies is successful at serving a modern audience of retrocomputing enthusiasts.