Changes in Photo Contest Insider: Security first

Security is highly important to us and we want to make sure that all data sent by our audience are safe, so we moved our website to HTTPS.

From October 2017, Google Chrome is going to change. If you, as a user, are going to browse an unencrypted site you will receive a big red warning “NOT SECURE”. We want to stay secure for our users and safe for the Google world, so we are going to implement SSL (Secure Socket Layers) certificates in Photo Contest Insider website.

How will you notice that? You can see a green padlock in the address bar of the url. That means that the data you send are secure from and to the website.

Our migration to SSL – What is it?

We went from: https://www.photocontestinsider.com

to: https://www.photocontestinsider.com

What will change for you as a visitor?

That from now on your data is safer than ever on Photo Contest Insider. Last year we already made all pages with forms safe. Now all our pages are safe. You will notice this with a green padlock in the browser, next to our URL.

What will change for you as a photo contest organizer?

After we move to HTTPS and due of these enhanced security measures, it is possible you won’t see our Traffic anymore in Google Analytics.

IMPORTANT: None of our changes make our traffic to you any less.

Only the classification of the traffic in Google Analytics will be different. This is because Google doesn’t show the visitors data if you come from a SAFE site (the new PCI) towards a non-safe site (possible your site). Instead of showing our traffic in Google Analytics as photocontestinsider.com / referral it will show our traffic as direct / none.

Luckily, there are ways around it. Below you can see what you can do to avoid this from happening.

How to keep track of your traffic?

Do you have SSL installed on your website? Does your website begin with HTTPS?

• YES – If your answer is yes, then you have nothing to worry about. You will keep seeing our traffic in your Google Analytics reports. No problem to be solved, you are done!
• NO – If your answer is no, don’t worry, we have two options for you, so there won’t be any problem at all! Just continue reading and choose which solution suits you best:

Relax, we have 2 options for you.

Option 1: Get SSL installed on your website

Tip 1: At Siteground you get them very easily (just 1 click) and for FREE!

Tip 2: If you already have another hosting, ask them if they support the Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate. With this you have the option to get an SSL installed for FREE!

Is this too technical? Too much trouble? Or you just don’t have the time for this IT stuff? Completely understood! We have another option for you:

Option 2: URL Shorteners (Bit.ly or Goo.gl)

If you want to keep track of our traffic, but don’t want to make any changes on your site, you can always use an URL Shortener.

An URL shortener turns any link into a ‘shortlink’ for instance: www.photocontestinsider.com turns into https://goo.gl/7wfiHj with Goo.gl url Shortener.

The beauty of an URL shortener is that they also collect data. So you can track how many clicks were made on that particular link. So just fill in your contest link into a URL shortener (bit.ly or goo.gl) and then use that shortened link in our contest submit form. To do so you are able to track the traffic to your website without any use of Google Analytics.

Easy, right? Feel free to share with us your thoughts in the comments below!