I know how basic web pages and forms work. But I'm now trying to learn more about what happens on a secure web page (https). Is there anything special, code-wise, in the page?

thanks.

Take a look at:

http://iroi.seu.edu.cn/books/ee_dic/whatis/https.htm

I have the same question, and the link didn't really answer it. I think the answer to the question is "nothing", meaning the page coding is the same, you are just sending it via a different secure protocol. Could someone please confirm that?

If that is correct, then the other thing to be careful with is that all of your elements on the page have to be secure if you want the page to not give the warning about some parts of the page are not secure. So, for example your images that are referenced on the page must either have logical references, or have the https url.

No special code as far as HTML, ASP etc. You just need to make sure that everything is called from that domain name. And you use the domain name that the cert is issued to, i.e. https://www.domain.com or https://domain.com

Some servers I have seen you need to actually use virtual links to call the images, relative links will not work. I ran into this problem awhile back on one server but on my current server - relative links work just fine.

Everything from an HTML or coding perspective really works the same on SSL pages... the only difference is that ALL images that you reference need to also be on an https:// (SSL-encrypted) server location or else you will get warnings and/or broken images.

Now on the hosting-level, some platforms require only 1 SSL cert to be installed per each IP, so you will want to ask your upstream hosting provider if you are on a shared system as to any specifics you need to do to get and install an SSL cert.

If it is your own server, then you should A-OK, you'll just need to get the SSL-cert for your installed Web server... Apache or whatever it may be.

I'm interested in this as well, If I will have an https page with form , how does all the verification goes on do I just put a different page in action attribute? Also having https page requires you to pay monthly fee? Is it possible to do without paying monthly fee as the sales are not that big?

N_F_S

Nothing special in the code. You still can use any pages whatever it is html, php, asp, jsp... just the protocal is changed to https

Having an https (secure) page doesn't have any direct cost associated with it outside of the necessity to get an SSL certificate - unless your hosting provider charges extra to install or host an SSL cert along with your virtual site.

Getting a secure cert is a fairly straightforward process and quite reasonably priced these days.

One company that is very affordable that you may want to check out is http://www.completessl.com - or ask your local hosting provider what they can do in this regard as well.

But from an application/programming/design standpoint, everything works absolutely the same. Just reference any images as https:// in the front instead of http://