SSL
/ E-Commerce - FAQ
1. What is
SSL?
2. What is
E-Commerce?
3. Will SSL
allow me to accept credit cards?
4. What's the
difference between using WebHostPage's secure
server and getting my own digital ID?
5. What is a
"Shopping Cart Program" and where can I get
one?
6. How do I use
WebHostPage's secure server?
SSL uses encryption along with a Digital ID to provide
the ability to transfer data securely over the
Internet. Below is the definition of what a Digital
ID is found off of VeriSign's web page:
Digital IDs are the electronic counterparts to
driver licenses, passports, and membership cards. You can
present a Digital ID electronically to prove your
identity or your right to access information or services
online. Digital IDs, also known as digital
certificates, bind an identity to a pair of electronic
keys that can be used to encrypt and sign digital
information. A Digital ID makes it possible to verify
someone's claim that they have the right to use a given
key, helping to prevent people from using phony keys to
impersonate other users. Used in conjunction with
encryption, Digital IDs provide a more complete security
solution, assuring the identity of all parties involved
in a transaction.
For more information please visit their homepage at http://www.verisign.com.
E-Commerce stands for Electronic Commerce. Just
like e-mail stands for electronic mail, and like
electronic mail, electronic commerce allows someone to
buy and sell products or services over the Internet.
SSL will provide you with the secure environment to
transfer the actual credit card information from the
browser to the server, you will then be responsible for
getting the credit card information from the server to
you, and then processing the credit card
information. You will also be required to obtain a
Merchant Account from an accredited financial institution
which you will use to process the credit card
information. There are several options available to
you for processing the credit card information once it is
on the server. You can use a company like CyberCash which
enables you to securely process credit card transactions
24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also use
PGP(encrypted email) to transfer the credit card
information from the server to your computer, and then
run it through credit card processing software like ICVERIFY
yourself. You should be able to find more
information about this type of software from your
financial institution.
There are several differences. For starters, the
URL is different, if you user our secure server with our
Digital ID, the URL will look something like:
https://secure.WebHostPage.com/~yourusername/your_form.html
Your users may also encounter a security warning
message. This poses no problem, however they will be
required to acknowledge this by clicking through a pop
up. This happens because the Domain name does not match
the Digital ID. The only way to avoid this is to purchase
your own Digital ID.
Cost is another difference. If you use our
Digital ID, you will have no extra costs. However,
if you decide to purchase your own from VeriSign, there
will be additional costs involved.
If you use you do decide to purchase your own Digital
ID (only available with plan B), the URL will look
something like:
https://secure.yourdomain.com/your_form.html
To find out more information about registering for
your own Digital ID from VeriSign, please go to:
http://digitalid.verisign.com/server/index.html
A shopping cart program allows you to offer products
to your clients with an easy to use interface that
generally allows them to go to different pages within
your site and select items to put in their virtual
"Shopping Cart". When they are done, they
check out and the shopping cart program calculates the
total. There are several shopping cart programs for
you to choose from, here's the list of currently
available ones from the CGI Resource Index:
http://www.cgi-resources.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/Shopping_Carts/
These are all programmed in perl, so most of them will
work with WebHostPage's servers, if you have any
questions regarding a certain shopping cart program,
please email us at support@WebHostPage.com
and ask us.
You don't need to have anything special setup.
You can use the same files you allready have, the only
thing that changes is the URL.
To make your webpages secure, just replace your normal
URL:
http://www.yourdomain.com
with the following URL:
https://yoursecureserver/~yourusername
The URL for your secure server can be found in the
e-mail that you received from us when you setup your
account. If you lost that e-mail and do not know
your secure server, e-mail: support@WebHostPage.com
Make sure you include the "S" in the
https:// when you are using the secure version.
Also make sure you include the "~" in front of
your username.
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