With Google and others pushing “HTTPS Everywhere” I’m just wondering if there are any sponsors that are considering making the move to serve all pages with HTTPS? You probably already have the SSL certificates for e-commerce, so there’s no added cost to you.
The primary reason to switch would be the privacy of your users. I know some of my users have started demanding SSL. It sorta makes sense for porn.
Another reason would be to continue to get referral data. As other sites migrate to SSL, you won’t get their referral data unless you’re also using SSL (or they specifically told the browser to give you referral data). If you’re not on SSL, the SSL-based referral traffic will look like direct traffic.
And in the future (or now) if you want to use the new protocols like SPDY and HTTP/2 you’ll need to have SSL implemented. So it seems just a matter of time before you’ll want to implement SSL.
Anyway, the video below is Google explaining why all sites should use HTTPS, and then a high level technical discussion about how to implement it (gotchas, best practices, etc.)
Let’s please not get into SSL as a ranking signal for SEO. There’s a separate thread for that. It’s a small signal at best, so let’s keep this thread about things like privacy, technical issues, and site performance.