Websites that use HTTP will need to be migrated to HTTPS by the website owners. HTTPS provides a more secure site that encrypts the data before it is transferred and protects the integrity of the data. HTTPS will eliminate the security warning messages that web browsers like Google Chrome display when accessing a HTTP website.
To determine if your website is using HTTP, review the status of your website on the Unit Websites in AFS page. The effort to upgrade a website to HTTPS varies and can take anywhere from a day to months to complete. ITS recommends that you begin the upgrade process now and that you finish the upgrade by March 30, 2023, to allow enough time to completed the migration off of Cosign by June 30, 2023.
What You Need To Do
Step 1: Get Started
Visit the Unit Websites in AFS page to:
- Confirm your website is using a current version of PHP and CMS before upgrading to HTTPS.
- If your website is not using a current version of PHP, upgrade your webite's PHP.
- If your website is not using the current CMS version, upgrade your website's CMS.
- Confirm that your website is using HTTP.
Step 2: Update Your Website
- If any of your site’s web pages are being served using HTTP but not HTTPS, update the HTTP side of your website to make those pages available via HTTPS.
- If the URL path (the portion after the hostname component of the URL) of an HTTP page conflicts with the URL path of an HTTPS page that has different content or different access permissions, change the URL path for one of the pages so that they can both exist at the same time on the HTTPS side of your website. This may require you to update links elsewhere on your website and on other websites that link to your site.
- Example:
- If your website is at example.umich.edu
- And website visitors can go to http://example.umich.edu/courses and see information about courses
- But website maintainers go to https://example.umich.edu/courses to update information about courses
- Then you have a conflict for the URL path/courses that you need to fix. Possibilities include:
- Change your website to show different things at https://example.umich.edu/courses depending on if a user is logged in or not.
- Or, move the administrative page for maintaining courses from https://example.umich.edu/courses to https://example.umich.edu/admin/courses and then move the page for viewing information about courses from http://example.umich.edu/courses to https://example.umich.edu/courses
- Example:
Step 3: Redirect all traffic to HTTPS
- Fill out the ITS Web Hosting Upgrade Form to notify the ITS Web Hosting team that you have upgraded your website to HTTPS.
- The ITS Web Hosting team will redirect all website traffic to HTTPS
- The ITS Web Hosting team will update the Project Database to reflect that of your website.
Step 4: Test!
- Test your website
- Resolve any issues