Cool Tricks and Tools, Web Design & Wordpress

Redirect SSL with .htaccess

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If you use an SSL certificate to secure pages on your website, you may want to setup your server to always display non-secure pages using ‘http’ instead of ‘https’

In terms of search engine optimisation it is advisable that your server is setup to display a single version of a page to avoid duplication.
In other words, when an SSL certificate is setup, it generally means that every page on the site is available at http://www.yoursitedomain.com and https://www.yoursitedomain.com.
Other than duplicate content, this can also cause the splitting of link equity between two versions of the same page.
This can happen when a user navigates to a secure page on your site (‘https’) and then navigates to other areas of the site whilst still remaining on the secure version of the site (which is the default behaviour on most Apache servers with SSL installed).
The rest of this blog psot explains how to handle SSL redirection using at .htaccess file installed on your server.
How to Create .htaccess Files
To create .htaccess files you will need to use a simple text editor such as Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on an Apple Mac. The .htaccess file should be saved with no file extension and it is important to include the full stop ‘.’ at the beginning of the filename. To do this, click Save As, and name the file .htaccess. If the program tries to save the file as .rtf or .txt, change this option to All Files.
Redirect Folder to HTTPS
Create the following .htaccess file and place it within the folder that you want to serve using SSL. Change the domain name and folder name to match your sites requirements. The .htaccess file will redirect http://www.yousitedomain.com/foldername/ to https://www.yoursitedomain.com/foldername/, it will also redirect any other pages within the folder to the ‘https’ version.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !=443
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} foldername
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.yoursitedomain.com/foldername/$1 [R=301,L]
Redirect Non-Secure Pages to HTTP
The following .htaccess file needs to be placed in the websites root folder. Change the domain name to match your sites requirements.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yousitedomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Please Note: When making adjustments to your server settings, please test the above method thorougly to check that it works correctly in all situations. Server’s can be setup with various different configurations. If this is the case the above .htaccess files may not work in their current format. It may be a simple case of changing the port settings in the .htaccess files or you may need to contact your website host for more information.
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Cool Tricks and Tools, Monitoring, Networking

How to configure PathSolutions for use with a proxy server

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Details: When a proxy server is used instead of a firewall, the license mechanism may not be able to connect to the PathSolutions license server on the Internet to validate its configuration. Thus, the program may fail to connect when it initially tries to validate its license, or may fail in the future if the proxy server is not properly configured.

Deployment: Microsoft has included a different proxy server configuration tool for different versions of its operating system. Use the below procedure associated with your OS version.

Microsoft Windows NT/2000/2003/XP (32bit)
Internet Explorer should be configured with the correct proxy server settings. Once that is completed, validate that it is working by browsing to the following test page:
https://sub01.nlsubscription.com/test.htm

If the test page works, the same proxy server configuration can be utilized by PathSolutions to validate its license. Enter the following command to configure Windows to use the same proxy configuration as IE:
proxycfg –u
At this point, you should be able to validate your license against the license server using SSL.

Microsoft Windows Vista/2008/7 (32bit)
Internet Explorer should be configured with the correct proxy server settings. Once that is completed, validate that it is working by browsing to the following test page:
https://sub01.nlsubscription.com/test.htm

If the test page works, the same proxy server configuration can be utilized by PathSolutions to validate its license. Enter the following command to configure Windows to use the same proxy configuration as IE:
NetSH WinHTTP import proxy source=ie

At this point, you should be able to validate your license against the license server using SSL.

Microsoft Windows Vista/2008/7 (64bit)
Internet Explorer should be configured with the correct proxy server settings. Once that is completed, validate that it is working by browsing to the following test page:
https://sub01.nlsubscription.com/test.htm

If the test page works, the same proxy server configuration can be utilized by PathSolutions to validate its license. A special 32bit version of the NetSH program must be run to do the configuration.

Use the following procedure:
1) Open a CMD window
2) Change directory to C:\Windows\SysWOW64
3) Enter:
NetSH WinHTTP import proxy source=ie

At this point, you should be able to validate your license against the license server using SSL.

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