HTTPS @ doncho.net
Let’s Encrypt failed me. At least failed my expectations that I’ll be able to get and happily use HTTPS certificate, which is free, reliable and usable in a shared hosting environment.
It seems the current phase of the project is not intended for users like me. It’s more oriented towards hosting companies and/or self-host server owners, who can do and handle all the scripting magic, which is needed in order to get HTTPS certificates installed and automatically maintained. The automatic tools still work only on Debian/Apache, so… I do not see a chance for me in near future.
Driven by all this, I asked my hosting company Superhosting.bg if they will start supporting Letsencrypt’s certificates anytime soon. Superhosting already supports quite a lot of options for people, who want HTTPS, but it seems Letsencrypt are in too early stage in order to get official support by the bigger hosting companies.
I’m very lucky to know both guys, who created Superhosting. They’re both great guys, but that’s more or less a given, knowing they created such excellent hosting provider service (in my opinion, best in class for Bulgaria, at least). Metodi advised me and helped me a lot to get convinced to try a paid HTTPS certificate instead. HTTPS is important for me, despite the fact that I’m just hosting a personal site. Having in mind all above, I decided to stop waiting for free services like Letsencrypt and to trust RapidSSL’s certificate at this stage. Hopefully, this will satisfy all my personal needs for the coming years (with Metodi’s kind help I got 3 year’s long certificate). Once this time passes, I’ll reevaluate the situation and will decide if I shall renew, or if I shall switch to something different.
Superhosting Support guys and girls assisted me greatly in migrating all blog’s contents from http://blog.doncho.net to https://doncho.net, where from now on all my content will keep living. The previous http://doncho.net contents were archived, but they were nothing but a start page, which was redirecting to my (very outdated) family picture gallery and my actual blog. The picture gallery will keep living where it is, as I have no nerve or intention moving it under (for example) https://doncho.net/pics. One day this gallery will be put to a deserved rest, but not before I find a better, easier way to migrate the Coppermine content under a better, more reliable gallery (which I still have not found).
So, feel free to update your links. Blog.Doncho.Net is still there, but it’s highly advisable, from now on, to access my content via https://doncho.net.