A few times at random over the last few days FF and Chrome (two different PCs in different houses) have both complained that they could not connect to the https://www.mx5oc.co.uk because the certificates did not check out. Most recently five times about twenty minutes ago on FF, but OK since.
However, when the connection is made (99.99% of the time) the padlock is green so obviously the certs are there on the server and correct.
This site is the only one of several I regularly visit that has ever shown this error.
So now, just a thought, probably completely wrong, and I don’t know what we could do about it anyway.
I’m wondering if there not a software problem, but actually a flakey link to/from the server, maybe even as simple as a data plug not seated properly, and most of the time the error correction gets the signals through, but when it is at its worst it takes longer to find the connection, hence the 404 errors etc.
Of course I know nothing about the arrangements, so I must emphasise that this is mere idle speculation. But the reason it came to mind was that this was often a problem with the big server farm at work fifteen/twenty years ago before we swapped to machines that used optical fibre connections (they had smart diagnostics that could identify any individual fibre connector that was not 100%).
“you can talk to some people most of the time, but you can’t talk to all the people at the same time”
(not sure that’s correct, but hey - memories fade these days!)
I’m not saying you are correct Richard, but it sounds logical to me.
I like that quote. Maybe it could be tightened up a bit. However I think you might be remembering this one;
Abraham Lincoln apparently said, with reference to politicians,
“You can fool all of the people some of the time; you can fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
I think the certificate issue maybe related to mixed secure / insecure content on the site. My FF tells me that the certificate is ok but that its has blocked parts of the site because it is insecure. I suspect this will be direct http:// links in older content.
We expect mixed content on the forum (from external pics, etc.) but that shouldn’t cause issues.
Would be interested to hear if this keeps happening. I can’t think of any real reason for it, but it’s obviously not a great user experience so something I’d want us to fix.
It happened AGM weekend on here, sent Martin an email, and he answered it later, saying they noticed this during the meeting, and sorted it immediately. Also had a virus warning a day or so before, from W10 defender, but managed to clear it straight away (reboot)- I was using the forum at the time. Had to leave a message on one post, and came back to it later. Not sure if the certificate was good or not, but got no warning it wasn’t. Normally I use Google (Edge doesn’t let me send attachments) but both servers indicated no certificate on the Saturday. Neither would let me proceed either. Website was clear later.
As Gerry mentioned, the automatic renewal/installation process failed, which would have caused errors for a period then.
Mixed content can cause the forum not to show a page as secure but that shouldn’t produce a warning beyond the address bar icon. We shouldn’t ever have mixed content on the main site, and certainly never on any pages which must be secure (e.g. a payment page).
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified. Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.
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