SSL - Secure Certificate Browser Warnings

Your shopping cart checkout pages are secure but not your normal site pages. Secure pages are typically slower to load and it is only needed to secure pages with customer info. This is done on all sites when checking out. You can notice the browser address bar go from http:// to https://.

By default, as part of COOLSites, we allow you to use our *.colony1.net secure certificate for the checkout area to reduce costs on your end. You will see this in the address bar of your browser when you click Go To Check Out. So basically upon check out, the browser is going from your domain and then redirected to *.colony1.net until the checkout is complete and then it goes back to your domain. 

The most professional option is to purchase your own personal secure certificate tied to your domain.
See the following KB article for how to obtain one: http://support.colony1.net/KB/a139/ssl-secure-certificate-install-new-purchase.aspx


Additional warnings below

Also Internet Explorer has an option to warn users that they are going from an Secure to a Not Secure or vise versa which is what is suppose to be done prior to entering the checkout and also after the checkout is complete. This option can be found at IE - Tools - Internet Options - Advanced - Warn if changing between secure and unsecure mode.

If you are recieving the following warnings in your browser during checkout please read below:
"The name on the security certificate is invalid or does not match the name of the site".

When you click on View Certificate it will tell you the source of what is causing the warning. It can be your domain name or any other type of image/banner displaying on your site.

This is usually due to the fact that you have image references on your site that are hard coded to your domain and are usually in the Configure Layout (Header, Top/Bottom Nav, or Footer) sections. These sections always show throughout the checkout process so they must have image references that are https:// friendly during checkout. You want to check these areas for any images or banners loaded set to your domain and update them as mentioned below.

When you load an image you use the editor in your admin area. After it is loaded you can right click the image and go to image properties and will see see it refering to sites.colony1.net as such: http://miscellaneousImages.colony1.net/XXXX/Image-Name.jpg where XXXX is your COOLSite ID.

If you were to manually load the image using copy/paste or the html section of the editor it would allow you to use your domain as such: http://YOUR-DOMAIN/miscellaneous_Images/XXXX/Image_Name.jpg. Using your domain has no advantage and may cause the browser warning mentioned above so you will want to fix it to be sites.colony1.net instead. There can be other sources besides your domain that can cause this as well. If they are images they should be loaded using the editor and if they are banners pulling images in then they should not be used in the configure layout area at all.

If this causes issues and you want to use your domain for images references you can purchase a SSL for your domain. If your get or have a custom SSL Secure Certificate then all, COOLSite Configure Layout Images, must reference the domain name of your Certificate.