HTTPS Changes With Google Chrome

It's the last thing you want to see if you have a lot of websites... multiple announcements from Google Search Console! Especially when it is about a change which they are, in my opinion, forcing upon the web!

According to the email received from Google...

"Starting October 2017, Chrome (version 62) will show a "NOT SECURE" warning when users enter text in a form on an HTTP page, and for all HTTP pages in Incognito mode.

The following URLs on your site include text input fields (such as < input type="text" > or < input type="email" >) that will trigger the new Chrome warning. Review these examples to see where these warnings will appear, so that you can take action to help protect users' data. This list is not exhaustive.

and they provide some pages as examples of where this "problem" might occur on your website.

For me, that's easy to work out - it's on EVERY DAMN PAGE. Because I made it easy for someone to SEARCH my site and have included a search form on every page, my whole site will scream "UNSAFE" to the public user after October!

Now that's just great! Not!

Don't worry about me only really NEEDING to secure the areas which ask ONLY for sensitive client data - email addresses, passwords, credit card info etc...

No. I have to secure a blasted simple site search form if I want to appease the Google gods and reassure my site visitors it is actually "safe" to use my website!!!

While I can (hopefully) fix most of the problem with a simple htaccess 301 redirect from HTTP to HTTPS, I will still have to find and FIX a LOT of INTERNAL LINKS and IMAGES which use the absolute rather than the relative method to generate their link!

That's gonna take some time. So thanks "G", for nothing!

To use a common Aussie expression....

"Not Happy Jan!"

That just about sums up what this change will mean to most in the industry!!!