If you are going to make a fanpage, have a Facebook page already or – even more crucially – if building pages is part of your business, there’s a big change coming. It’s a big change that you need to be aware of, and more importantly, it’s just around the corner. You must make a fanpage secure, and I’m going to tell you both how and why.
As of October 1st, all Facebook pages must be secure, because as the Facebook people themselves suggest, ‘As the Web evolves, expectations around security change’.
If you have an account, Facebook holds your personal data and – perhaps because they have been so widely criticized for apparent security lapses in the past – they’ve decided to protect your data by securing every single fanpage. If you make fanpages, this is something you cannot ignore, because it isn’t going to go away.
Unless you’ve secured your pages already, the URL that they are served from begins with a plain vanilla ‘http’. To make a fanpage secure, it must be served from an ‘https’ address which indicates that the URL is secure and that the data being passed back and forth is encrypted.
So, what does this mean in practical terms assuming that your fanpage – or for when you make a fanpage for your clients – is currently in an unsecured environment?
Step one to make a fanpage secure is to have an SSL or security certificate attached to the domain where that fanpage is hosted.
There are a few possibilities here.
To begin with, your current web host may offer a shared security certificate. In other words, some hosts offer a security certificate that covers all domains on their server, which should in theory be all you need.
In practice, I’ve found that whilst his seems to work well with some hosts, it’s far less effective with others.
The problem with this is that whilst his seems to work very well with some hosts, others are far less reliable. For instance, I use IX Hosting for some of my sites and their shared security certificate seems to work very well but with other hosts, the performance is patchy at best.
Nevertheless, option one is to use or switch to a host who offers a shared certificate, in which case, IX Hosting are a good choice.
Option two is to approach your existing web host to see how much an SSL certificate for a single domain is going to cost from them. Under normal circumstances, you’d expect to pay $100 or more per year, although you may find that they offer cheaper alternatives.
If you’re going to use a dedicated SSL certificate (i.e. one that is specific and unique to your domain), you also need a dedicated IP address as well. With most decent hosting companies, this shouldn’t cost more than a few dollars a month.
The third option is to buy an SSL certificate from a third-party provider.
This gives you the opportunity of scouring the market for the best deal. Before doing so however, check out Namecheap because they currently offer the cheapest SSL certificates I’ve found at $8.95 a year.
Be sure to check with your hosting company that they are happy to accept a third-party security certificate before you buy. Most are but I haven’t checked every host, obviously.
Facebook pages are changing forever in just a few days, and if didn’t know how to make a fanpage secure previously, you do now. If haven’t secured yours yet, you need to take action without any further delay. Following these simple guidelines will set you on the right road.
One final request. Please ‘Like’ this to ensure that your Facebook friends all know about it too. After all, you want to help them protect their Facebook resources as well, don’t you…?
PS. In the spirit of total disclosure, yes, I’ve included affiliate links in this article and yes, I’d be really grateful if you click through them. But if not, c’est la vie, non?
PPS. More about how you make a fanpage secure next time. Which won’t take another year, promise…
A few days after the impending Armageddon when every Facebook page would apparently disappear forever, vapourized as if they were never there in the first place, guess what happened?
