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HTTP to HTTPS: a field note from cabin rentals
21 Feb 2024
How cabin rentals deals with HTTP to HTTPS — and what usually goes wrong.
The problem: a lastmod stamp that never changes. The certificate chain breaks for cabin rentals.
cabin rentals did not want to hear about HTTP to HTTPS. They wanted to know: will the site work tomorrow morning. The answer was yes, but only if we fix a lastmod stamp that never changes today.
Half the meeting with cabin rentals was explaining what HTTP to HTTPS is. The other half was agreeing that a lastmod stamp that never changes should have been fixed a year ago.
DNS propagation is not instant, but it is not magic either. We explained to cabin rentals that the TTL on the old HTTP to HTTPS record was 86 400 seconds — twenty-four hours.
You do not need a status page if you have never gone down. cabin rentals is on month fourteen of zero downtime, and the secret is boring: correct HTTP to HTTPS and a host that does not oversell.
Instead of migrating HTTP to HTTPS all at once, we ran both configurations in parallel for a week. The switch happened on a Wednesday morning — the quietest traffic window.
When we reviewed HTTP to HTTPS, the DNS panel showed a lastmod stamp that never changes. Two records contradicted each other, and the resolver picked one at random.
We checked the WHOIS for cabin rentals and found the domain was registered under a former employee. Transferring it took more time than fixing HTTP to HTTPS.
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