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Piwik HTTP to HTTPS if you move websites monitored to HTTPS?
MTUser2012
Member
in Help
I've been monitoring HTTP WP sites with a Piwik server I set up. All well and good.
When I moved a couple of the WP sites to HTTPS, I see that Piwik.js in the waterfall at GTMetrix is aborted. If I am going to successfully monitor HTTPS websites, do I need to move my Piwik VPS to HTTPS? If so, do you know if it is possible to get an SSL for an IP only, and how to add SSL to a piwik installation? I've tried Googling and not come up with much helpful.
Comments
If you use piwik to monitor https, your piwik should also support https. How did you do https for your WP sites?
Just setup your piwik virtualhost to support ssl as other https virtualhost.
Yes, you need to enable HTTPS for your Piwik server as browsers will not connect to insecure resources generally. If a website is HTTPS, browsers will make an effort to remain strictly HTTPS.
This is something that has to be done at the webserver level. What webserver are you using for your Piwik installation?
http://piwik.org/faq/general/faq_68/
in that case maybe the gmetrix not load the insecure part of your site.
Just setup ssl on piwik front end just like you setup ssl on wp
Are you using the IP instead of a hostname to connect to piwik server? It is possible to get a cert for a IP address but most CA require you to be the owner of IP address. It's much better if you get a domain get a certificate for it and then put piwik on the domain.
https://support.globalsign.com/customer/portal/articles/1216536
Thanks for help. I use Virtualmin to host the WP sites. It is very easy to add SSL to a virtual server with Virtualmin. I am not using anything to host the Piwik instance. I just installed it on Centos VPS, following the instructions at the Piwik website. So maybe I should just look at adding SSL to a Centos installation?
With so MANY cheap TLDs nowadays, it's not really cool https-ing IP address, except you have Chinese lucky number on the IP
Thanks for the help. I just set up Piwik on a Centos VPS. After the first reply, I googled around and found this:
https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Https
Which covers creating a self signed SSL cert. I guess I'll give it a try and see if it fixes the load problem. If it doesn't, I can always spring for a certificate.
you should not use self-signed cert, your client may see not secured error on their browsers, or if you can get a cheap domain then use cloudflare ssl with your self-signed cert which is super easy to setup
You may want to proxify the piwik server.
I haven't tested this yet, but in that case the piwik.php(js) file is called from locally, not from the remote server.
Thus your visitor may not get the invalid ssl cert message.
http://piwik.org/faq/how-to/faq_132/
I use this on a few sites and on speed tests it looks like nothing is called from a remote server.
This is a good point. Thanks. I was thinking I don't want to spend $8+ on a name for my piwik vps, but I'd forgotten all the cheap TLDs. I'll see what I can find.
In case anyone else has this same issue, if you convert your Piwik VPS to Https and use a self signed cert, Piwik tracking won't work on the WP sites. I guess self signed certificates are regarded as unsecure sources in WP and the pull from the Piwik server is aborted; you can see it in the GTMetrix report.
So buying a domain name for the Piwik server and installing a signed SSL looks like my next step.
A browser won't load it because it's not secure. Same thing if you're trying to load assets from http on an https site - browser just ignores it.
Got it. Thanks.