Pirate's Cove

One of y’all reached out and asked me about the security message that you can see up in the browser bar, which reads “Your connection to this site is not fully secure. Attackers at this site might be able to see the images you’re looking at on this site and trick you by modifying them.”

It was a valid concern. Pirate’s Cove is an https (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) site. I have a valid security certificate which renews. Believe me, it was a pain to make it that way. It made certain things not work (like popup comments), and can cause the RSS feed to crash out ever 3-4 days, so I have to clear the cache and us an RSS reset plugin. Among other things I had to fix.

Thing is, a goodly chunk of the photos I use are hosted either through Photobucket (which is not secure, but, I only embed the photos I have uploaded to my own area. I do not use other people’s uploads) or my Gallery page (primarily for the Sunday Patriotic Pinup post). Just that alone will cause the security warning. Any photo/GIF I download to my PC before putting on Photobucket is checked through McAfee Security automatically.

There are a couple things on the sidebar which also cause this, such as the photos under Ye Olde Adverts, and even the Dreamhost Green Site button (front page only). So, really, the only issues are outside photos. I very much limit where I embed stuff from. Always have, though, mostly had to do with not cluttering up the page with outside scripts that can stop loading if they are down.

So, yes, it is totally safe. I have multiple plugins that deal with stuff, such as Bad Behavior, Akismet, and a few others, plus the backend security via Dreamhost. There’s one passcode to the admin page. The htaccess code is protected (it has been hacked once long ago). I do not let people register anymore as readers anymore (I opened it up briefly and got 4 BS users in one hour). So, it’s all good.