Building your site

Now it is time to install, configure and build your site. You might be starting from scratch with a new site, or you might be upgrading an existing site.

Installing

For help with installation, please contact Service Desk

Building

 

Secure websites (SSL & HTTPS)

If your website is a secure site using SSL (your URL will start with https) you will want to make sure items from the central store such as banners and stylesheets are also delivered via SSL. Otherwise, your readers will be warned about insecure content on your site and it may not display everything needed.

There are three different ways you can tell the central store to deliver via SSL:

  1. Ask us to flag your Site ID as either:
    • https – 'https' will be specified as the scheme for all included files (eg styles). If the site can also be loaded as http, using the 'https' option can create an unnecessary extra load on the server and slow down page loading.
    • adaptive – no scheme will be specified, so included files (eg styles) will be delivered as either http or https depending on the URL of the site. This means that server load will not be increased unnecessarily if the site is loaded as http. However, if a user saves the page locally, styles will not display correctly in the local copy.
  2. Manually add an argument to the query string/s to request items from the central store via SSL. Allowable values are &ssl=true, &ssl=1, &ssl=yes or &ssl=on (in the PHP templates, you would edit settings_site.php and ensure that $qs_arg="&ssl=true"; )
  3. Ensure your site is properly set to https via the web server. If your site uses the PHP templates, there is code within the config.php file that will pick up if the URL has https and will automatically request information from the central store via SSL.