From HTTP to HTTPS
As part of ongoing security improvements,
Flight Rising will begin using
the more secure HTTPS protocol on
all pages and resources following a scheduled maintenance period from
06:00 - 07:00 Server Time, Monday, October 21, 2019.
Current HTTPS Pages
Some pages on the
Flight Rising website are already HTTPS. They are:
- Registration
- Login
- Password Change
- Password Reset
- Lost Username
Gem purchases do not take place on the
Flight Rising website. Gems are purchased through Paypal's website and interface.
What to expect
For the most part, the changeover should be transparent. However, we want to give you a heads up about some side effects that will occur when this change goes live.
The site may be significantly slower for a short period after the switch-over.
Flight Rising is an image-heavy site. When the switch occurs, most web browsers will have to re-download image resources that were previously cached. If (when) this happens, you may experience slow loading pages depending on your individual browser. Everyone should be aware of the fact that the additional load on the servers may potentially cause an overall slowdown. If it does, it should resolve by itself within a day or two.
The site may be marginally slower for some players going forward.
Unfortunately, the process of creating and maintaining secure connections to the site carries with it some unavoidable overhead. We're working on ways to minimize the overhead required and improve your experience, but HTTPS means some will always remain.
[ img ] BBCode tag will automatically use HTTPS.
The [ img ] tag will automatically upgrade image URLs that start with http:// to use https:// which eliminates browser warnings about "mixed content." Most of you won't have to update any BBCode in your posts, signatures, bios, etc. That being said, there are a minority of image hosts that may not support HTTPS. If they don't, using those image hosts could result in broken images.
Please see the guide below for instructions on how to check that your image tags will work after the switch-over, and how to fix them if there is a problem.
The Alternate Socket setting in Account Settings is being removed entirely.
The alternate socket is a setting for players to use when they're experiencing network difficulties with Fairgrounds and Coliseum. The "On" and "Off" settings toggled between two different TCP ports to communicate with our server, both of which had advantages and disadvantages depending on your network environment. After the switch-over, all Fairgrounds games and the Coliseum will connect using HTTPS on its default port, which should be more reliable than either of the two previous options. Some connection error messages may still refer to the "Alternate Socket" until we have edited all of them.
Checking that your BBCode images will work after the switch
First, take look at your BBCode. If your image tags look like this:
Code:
[img]https://nonexistentimagehost.com/myimage.png[/img]
They should
just work, because the URL starts with
https://. Most image hosts already produce links in this format!
However, if the URL starts with just
http://, like this:
Code:
[img]http://nonexistentimagehost.com/myimage.png[/img]
Then there is a
small possibility that the image will not display when the switch-over occurs.
The easiest way to test if there is a problem is to edit your BBCode to add in the extra "s" after "http" and see if the image still displays. If it does, you're all good! If not, you will have to upload the image to a different image host that supports HTTPS links.
Please note that
any images that are hosted on flightrising.com itself will work just fine after the switch-over.
