After many weeks of coding, testing, and infrastructure additions, I’m excited to share a new and frequently-requested feature with you: SSL certificates for custom domains.
If you’re one of the many customers who has brought a custom domain to Fireside, you may have discovered that it only works when accessed with http:// and not with https:// in the URL. This is because every "secure" website is required to have a valid SSL certificate so it can be served up securely via https (instead of plain old http).
In order to support this, I had to engineer a system that would first verify your custom domain’s DNS settings (part of the previous feature rollout earlier this summer) and then request, validate, provision, activate, and install a custom SSL certificate on your behalf.
Despite the behind-the-scenes complexity, the user experience had to be simple and easy to use, and of course I tried a dozen different implementations, finally settling on a simple radio button toggle to enable your the installation of your custom SSL certificate.
Once enabled, instead of seeing a security notification when attempting to view your website with a https URL prefix, you’ll get a secure website via your own Fireside-provided custom SSL certificate.
I’m rolling this feature out slowly at first. So if you'd like to be one of the first customers to try it out, please fill out this brief sign-up form and I’ll get you into the queue. Once I’ve added your Podcast, you’ll want to visit the Settings -> Domains section and toggle the SSL radio button to On.
Note: Just like your standard Fireside website and Admin Dashboard, your Podcast’s MP3 downloads have always been delivered via SSL since day one, even if you’ve been using a custom domain. And you don’t have to enable a SSL certificate when you add your custom domain, it’s totally optional. Note that these certificates are not transferrable outside of Fireside should you decide to host elsewhere, and if you’re using a third-party system (like CloudFlare) as a wrapper around your Fireside website, you won’t be able to use this feature.
I hope you all enjoy and benefit from this new feature, and I truly appreciate you for being a Fireside customer!
Happy podcasting,
Dan
