[Rhodes22-list] Does our website need SSL?

[Mary Lou Troy]

"List historian" huh? I think that's another way to say I'm old and have 
been hanging around a long time. (All true - I believe since 1997 or 
very early 1998.) I note that Roger was gone a while but has been around 
a lot longer than me and he still has his same boat.

I'm thinking you don't need me for any of the improvements you are 
making to the list and the website but don't hesitate to ask.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is a list of owners and their boats. 
Rummy kept that up for many years separate from the email list and 
website. Every now and then, he would put out an inquiry for updates and 
new members. He would update it and send it out "back channel" who had 
asked to be listed. It was never published otherwise  and was only 
available to the people on it. Known fondly as "da list" it contained 
addresses, phone numbers, email contact, names of significant others and 
family members and boat information like name, year, year recycled, HIN 
and home port. I tried to take it over when he gave it up but it was in 
a proprietary software with somewhat convoluted output. I bogged down 
trying to transfer it into something else and never completed the task. 
Pre Facebook and other means, it was a great source of contacts and 
added to the cameradery of the group functioning sort of like an ad-hoc 
owners association. Note that pre-1991, before my time, I understand 
there was an owner's association. I think the email list sort of took 
over from that but there was probably a gap in there as well. Roger 
might know that.

Best to all,
Mary Lou



On 7/18/2020 1:04 PM, Tom Van Heule wrote:
> Thank you MikeW for that summary - thats good to have written down ;)
> Peter - everyone beat me to it, and I couldn't have said it better.
>
> I created a discord if anyone cares to join an 'off ;da list' talk about
> site planning: https://discord.gg/CADzXh
>
> Cheers,
> Tom
>
> On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 7:48 PM Michael D. Weisner <mweisner at ebsmed.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I cannot tell you all how happy I am that so many of you have shown
>> interest in the website design. Thank you Peter for creating something new
>> to illustrate where we can go. Thank you Luis for your efforts to work with
>> Nabble. I didn't know that it was open source. Thank you all for your
>> interest in the effort to bring our website up to date.
>>
>> For those who know significantly more than I do about web services,
>> especially that we should secure the website, I am happy to report that we
>> are hosted currently on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as an EC2 server. It
>> appears that a free SSL certificate may be easily obtained directly through
>> AWS or LetsEncrypt and added to our instance with little or no additional
>> cost.
>>
>> The responsibility for the rhodes22.org website and email list manager
>> was transferred to me from John Lock in the spring of 2016 when he lost the
>> ability to provide hosting services. John had assumed the responsibility
>> from Michael Meltzer who had hosted Rhodes22.org for several years. It
>> should be noted that Michael Meltzer still owns and pays for the domain
>> name.
>>
>> I chose AWS because felt that we needed to avoid using personal server
>> resources or services that might go out of business or change their rules
>> (GeoCities). If Amazon failed, the loss of the list would be the least of
>> our problems. Our AWS charges are about $15/month, a sum that I have been
>> happy to pay considering the activity on da list. For greater details as to
>> the origins of Rhodes22.org, Blew Skies, etc., I defer to Mary Lou as the
>> list historian since I have only been on da list since 2005 or so.
>>
>> Since I was not a webmaster, I made few changes to the website portion. I
>> was more concerned with survival of the email list and the archives. I
>> asked for volunteers and help in the past and my May 24th call was answered
>> by many of you this year (nearly 30 posts!)
>>
>> Rhodes22.org has more content than any sailboat forum I have visited and a
>> very active membership. Now, we need to make it accessible to all who visit
>> and easy to search. I am confident that we have the technology and the
>> people to make it happen.
>>
>> I want to move slowly so that our efforts are sustainable. There is so
>> much to talk about starting with creating a "wish list" of changes and
>> features followed by defining individual tasks and implementation
>> schedules. I would like to suggest a Zoom call to start an interactive
>> discussion about the possibilities, timeframes and costs (time and $$$).
>> Scheduling is very important as we are in the middle of sailing season in
>> North America.
>>
>> Mike
>> s/v Wind Lass ('91)
>> Nissequogue River, NY
>> I’d rather be sailing :~)
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Rhodes22-list <rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org> On Behalf Of
>> Frederick Lange
>> Sent: Friday, July 17, 2020 6:07 PM
>> To: The Rhodes 22 Email List <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
>> Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] Does our website need SSL?
>>
>> SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, a global standard security technology
>> that enables encrypted communication between a web browser and a web
>> server.  Even if there is nothing that needs to be secured, users will be
>> put off if a SSL certificate is not there.
>>
>> *WWW* stands for World Wide Web.  It is no longer useful to identify a
>> domain as using HTML and it is too often hijacked these days.
>> Regards,
>>
>> Rick Lange
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 5:59 PM Peter Nyberg <peter at sunnybeeches.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Rick,
>>>
>>> Could you clarify on your last point?
>>>
>>> On the proposed new home page I’ve included a link to
>>> www.facebook.com/ < http://www.facebook.com/>…  Should this be just
>>> facebook.com < http://facebook.com/>?  Or do you mean something else?
>>>
>>> —Peter
>>>
>>>> On Jul 17, 2020, at 5:48 PM, Frederick Lange
>>>> <sloopblueheron at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> SSL is definitely needed.  Most internet security software, like
>>>> Norton, either gives a warning or requires active verification if
>>>> there is no
>>> SSL.
>>>> Also, stay away from the www prefix as that's a common redirect
>>>> target these days.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> Rick Lange
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 5:24 PM Curtis Ruck via Rhodes22-list <
>>>> rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>
>>


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