Bill Myers

Often it's the little things that can cause the biggest problems

We were recently contacted by a client who was in a panic because the order form had disappeared from his web site - which meant customers weren't able to do business with him.

We investigated and found that his order form hadn't actually disappeared. The problem was his SSL certificate had expired, which meant that when visitors clicked on an order link, they saw a '404 page not found' error message.

The solution to the problem was simple. Just by renewing the site's SSL certificate, the order form came back on line, and customers could again place orders.

There is an important lesson in this.

If you use a SSL certificate to secure your web site, make sure you don't let the SSL expire. SSL certificates usually need to be renewed each year, and in most cases the SSL issuer will alert you by email about the renewal. But if your email filter deletes the message or you fail to respond to it, your SSL will expire, and your order forms can disappear.

If in doubt about your SSL, you can check the expire date by visiting your secure page, and double clicking on the lock icon that appears in the lower right corner of the screen.

It's a good idea to check this before it expires . . .