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All About HTTPS

  • Updated

HTTPS is a means of securely transferring information over a network using an encrypted connection. The primary use of HTTPS on the internet is to verify the authenticity of a website and to protect the data being transferred between the client and server. In this article, we will review:


HOW HTTPS BECAME THE STANDARD

With the inception of the World Wide Web, HTTP was the initial protocol for websites.

As the internet evolved, security measures increased. Browsers now recognize an HTTP site as not secure. 


WHY SHOULD YOUR SITE BE HTTPS COMPLIANT?

In addition to maintaining your site’s credibility, there are other reasons to update your site to HTTPS: 

  • It protects your privacy by ensuring that the information you send over the internet is not easy to intercept and used for nefarious purposes (e.g. identity theft).

  • It is now factored into some market-leading search engines' organic ranking algorithms. Failing to switch to HTTPS may affect your site's ranking and thus, its traffic.

  • By default, some browsers will hide insecure content on a secure page.

  • It's free! Check out Let's Encrypt to learn more and get started with HTTPS. 


HOW DOES AVANTLINK SUPPORT HTTPS COMPLIANCE? 

Affiliates who have updated from HTTP to HTTPS are not required to make any changes or updates in order for the updated links to track.  If updates have yet to be made by the affiliate, AvantLink has ensured that HTTP links will automatically reroute to HTTPS link. Even if rerouting  breaks, AvantLink has implemented additional tracking resilience on merchant sites to ensure that links are tracked successfully.

If you are still concerned about your HTTP links, manually adding the ‘S’ will make the link operate as intended.

AvantLink’s Arches Platform - which will be released gradually - will be 100% HTTPS compliant.


DOES HTTPS UPDATES IMPACT AVANTLINK TOOLS?

Most of AvantLink’s tools are fully HTTPS compliant. There are two exceptions.

Affiliates using the Product Ad Widget (PAW) and Product Content Widget (PCW) may notice that those tools no longer load properly (or at all) after updating to HTTPS. 

Originally, these tools were designed for HTTP, not HTTPS, since at the time HTTPS had a significant (negative) impact on performance. In the recent past users would get "Allow Insecure Content?" pop-ups, but still be able to load the tools. Now, however, as the web continues to migrate towards HTTPS as standard, those insecure requests produce console errors or the tracking is dropped.

Both product widgets will be revamped and fully HTTPS compliant as AvantLink’s Arches Platform gradually rolls out. In the meantime, here are a few steps you can take to implement similar functionality:

  • If you recently upgraded to HTTPS, look for any 'avantlink' links and tools on your site, and update those all to HTTPS. This will help ensure that any referrals to HTTPS merchant sites will not be dropped.
  • To replicate the functionality of the PAW and PCW, AvantLink strongly recommends using our Product Search API, since it is very flexible and supports HTTPS. More information on that (including code samples) can be found here: http://classic.avantlink.com/api.php?help=1&module=ProductSearch

 

ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS

If you have any questions about this article or to confirm if your site if fully HTTPS compliant, please contact support@avantlink.com.

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