Senryu : catastrophic calamities

It’s catastrophic!
cachexic calamities
cataclasmic cause

senryu by M. Nakazato LaFreniere  (notes on words used below the fold at the bottom)

Ok, I just found out someone couldn’t reach my blog because her browser said

My haiku site is an http site, not an https site because the security certificate is like $80 and I have several sites so I didn’t see any reason to buy it when people shouldn’t be putting their passwords in and there is no reason for credit cards and such.  I honestly don’t think comments need to be encrypted.

But browsers are beginning to wage a war against http.  I have a search box on my site that can be used to search within the site but not outside the site.  “Chrome label HTTP pages as insecure if users can input any data. Google highlights this will apply to any page with a search box.”(1)  In the same 2017 ZDNet article, they said Google planned to put in red “Not Secure” for any http:// when in the past that warning was used for broken https://  sites.  They plan to do that July 2018.  They have already downgraded any site using http:// in google search engine results.

Liam explained, “The other reason Google is dragging the web towards HTTPS is to support its push for developers to adopt progressive web apps through JavaScript ‘service workers’. These sit between the browser and network to enable offline and background syncing features and require HTTPS to be enabled. ”

Google has an app that moves sites to an https site.  This problem Google is creating of forcing people to use https:// is a windfall for hosting companies.  It i forcing people to upgrade to more expensive hosting plans that include the certificate or buying the security certificates.

Weird thing is people using Chrome in 2017 was having the same error code as my friend when she tried to reach my site but they were trying to go to CNN, google.se and some other major sites. (2).  However, they could go to the sites if they used Fox or Opera.

The problem is that when I read the articles, they talk about how to make it so your ecommerce site does not get that warning — no one is addressing the fact that it is affecting any site that has an internal search engine.  One of the default WordPress widgets is a search engine which many blogsuse.  If you are on WordPress.com, you are automatically on https://  .  But some of us have wordpress sites hosted on other hosting plans and use the http:// protocol because we aren’t selling anything on the site although we may have links to some place else that does sell stuff.

In  The Verge article, Chrome crowed about how many sites have shifted from http to https in the last 6 months.(3)  Well, yeah if you downgrade someone’s search results and don’t allow visitors to view a site on their browser, sure they’re going to change if they have the bucks.  That’s not a voluntary shift though.  That’s just plain coercion.

So here I am. Either I pony up $75 per site for the security certificate, or I take off the search engine.  I pay $4.99 per month for 4 blogs hosted on the same site since subhosting is allowed at my hosting company.  Since I started Cactus Dreams and might be selling things directly there someday, I have https there and paid for a security certificate but that blog is hosted seperately from the other three.

How many of you had the problem of not being able to access my site in the last few months? I’d like to know.  Also thank you for trying again if it did happen and you just tried again later.

A couple months ago I had a Canadian friend mention it but I thought it was a wordpress glitch as at the time my Daily Post entries weren’t showing their either.

So I am taking off my search engine widget. Please let me know if this fixes the problems any of you have had visiting my poetry.

Which means I better start getting back to work on my index and table-of-content pages or I won’t be able to find anything.  Ehhh. Maybe no one wants to read my past content.  Or they can use google search to find them as I did with “Cactus Haiku” in quotes and the word “mermaid.”  It works pretty well ironically.  This might also make people use outside-their-site search engines more improving their stats.

So why do I still feel a tad grumpy?  I guess it’s the same with the way they force my computer to shut down to do upgrades — I don’t like fixing things that aren’t broken because sometimes then it breaks.  Murphy’s law.

References:

(1) “Google tightens noose on HTTP: Chrome to stick ‘Not secure” on pages with search fields” by Liam Tun, ZDNet, April 28, 2017

(2) “Your connection is not private error“, Google Chrome Help Forum, thread started 2/17/17

(3)”Chrome will mark all HTTP sites as ‘not secure’ starting in July” by Russell Brandom, The Verge, Feb 8, 2018

Below the fold:

I so wanted to use this word but it just didn’t fit.

cathisophobia : fear of sitting

I did use this one

cachexia (variants: cachexy )
having an unhealthy physical or mental state

Also from a 1755 dictionary:

Cache’xy. n.s.. [καχεξία.] A general word to express a great variety of symptoms; most commonly it denotes such a distemperature of the humours, as hinders nutrition, and weakens the vital and animal functions, proceeding from weakness of the fibres, and an abuse of the non-naturals, and often from severe acute distempers. Arbuthnot on Diet.
Johnson, Samuel. “Cachexy.” A Dictionary of the English Language: A Digital Edition of the 1755 Classic by Samuel Johnson. Edited by Brandi Besalke. Last modified: January 17, 2014. http://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/cachexy/.

Catastrophic calamities
April prompts
Putting my feet in the dirt

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The Phrontistery