Clarification on something on HTTPS conversion document

[insidethehall]

In the official vBulletin HTTPS conversion document for vBulletin 4, it mentions this:

"Go to Settings > Options > Site Name / URL / Contact Details.
Edit 'Forum URL' and add the 's' into the URL.
For example, if your URL is http://www.contoso.com/forum, change it to https://www.contoso.com/forum"

Is this the only place the URL needs to be changed?

On this page of options, there are also fields for "Forum Component URL" (I currently have blank), "CMS Component URL" (I currently have blank), "Blog Component URL" (I currently have blank) and there's also a HomePage URL setting as well.

Do all of those fields stay untouched?

[djbaxter]

Those can all be left blank. For the Home Page setting, you can enter the same as the Forum URL if you wish or set it to a different URL if you use a different home page.

[insidethehall]

Those can all be left blank. For the Home Page setting, you can enter the same as the Forum URL if you wish or set it to a different URL if you use a different home page.

Thank you.

As one follow up, can you (or anyone that knows) explain to me what the rebuild styles option does and why it is a necessary step in moving to HTTPS?

[djbaxter]

To be honest, I updated to HTTPS quite a while ago and I'd forgotten that step was part of it. However, I think the Rebuild Styles option would update any references in the installed styles to locations from HTTP to HTTPS.

It's not likely to hurt or break anything.

In fact, overall, I found moving from HTTP to HTTPS pretty much painless except for some mixed content issues where there were hard coded URLs still using HTTP. If you don't get a green padlock (or other icon for secure for your forum pages in whatever browser you use), these sites can help you track down why:

• https://www.whynopadlock.com/
• https://www.jitbit.com/sslcheck/

One of the big culprits is often linked images in forum posts: for this issue, I use this add-on from vBulletin.org which caches a copy of the images locally so they load as HTTPS: vB4 Import External Images - vBulletin.org Forum. There are a couple of others that use slightly different processes but I found this one works best for me.

The other potential issues are:

• Plugins: If you still get mixed content or insecure content issues, go through all your plugins and check for HTTP links -> convert them to HTTP if you find them
• Ads like AdSense: fix any code you find that uses HTTP:// by replacing "http://somesite.com" with "//somesite.com"

Once you've fixed all those, also run https://sslchecker.godaddy.com/ as a final check.