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Why certificate renewals matters for a marina
6 Jul 2024
How a marina deals with certificate renewals — and what usually goes wrong.
The problem: a CAA record that blocks the new CA. The certificate chain breaks for a marina.
A static site for a marina does not need a CDN, a build pipeline, or a container. It needs correct certificate renewals and a host that stays online.
Early on we tried to automate certificate renewals for a marina with a cron job. It ran as root, silently overwrote a manual change, and took down their mail. Lesson learned.
If the hours on Google disagree with the site, people trust Google and then arrive angry. certificate renewals will not fix that. The hours page will.
We document certificate renewals in a shared spreadsheet. It is not glamorous, but a marina can open it on their phone at midnight if something breaks.
You do not need a status page if you have never gone down. a marina is on month fourteen of zero downtime, and the secret is boring: correct certificate renewals and a host that does not oversell.
For a marina, the boring path won: HTTPS, a backup that we have restored once on purpose, and a calendar reminder for certificate renewals.
When we onboard a marina, the first thing we check is certificate renewals. It tells us more about the previous provider than any sales call.
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