From January 2021 Google has announced that their Chrome browser, one of the most widely used web browsers today, will block downloads of any files (images, documents, pdfs, etc.) that comes from HTTP when the rest of the site is on HTTPS. This isn’t new as Google’s search engine, the most used search service in the world, has been flagging sites as ‘Not Secure’ if they do not use an SSL for quite some time. But this new step will potentially cause problems for websites that are not setup properly to serve content over HTTPS (with an SSL).
What does this mean?
If you have a website that has files being served from HTTP instead of HTTPS then Chrome will block these files from being served to the user. If it is an image it will mean your page simply won’t show the image and instead you will see a horrible little broken image icon instead. If it is a document you are allowing users to download, that will simply not work. In short, your user experience of your website will be impacted considerably as users will not see or be able to undertake the actions they could before.
How can this be fixed?
The most important thing is to make sure that your website and all of your assets (images, files, etc.) is being served completely over HTTPS with a valid SSL certificate. Luckily if you are already an Idio customer then you will have this. But if you are not then you will need to get this sorted ASAP.
We have undertaken a number of ’emergency migrations’ in the last few months for clients who need to sort out problems with their websites. We would be happy to give you a quote to do the same if you have this problem and need our help.
Contact us to find out what the next steps are.
