Ever since the changeover to a secure system my avatar doesn't show up, at least in MS Edge. I still see it on my iPad and if I use Internet Explorer. I am not allowed to change it, either, I had someone make and host on his secure server a new avatar however, when I attempt to change the avatar to the new one I am told that it cannot be accessed. The person who did my avatar has hosted other people's avatar on SF with success. I have tried clearing my cache and restarting my PC.

As you probably recall, creslin, you have been hosting the avatar I have been using. It appears as though you're currently having trouble with the new and improved hosting service.

Please read: SIGforum is now "secure",

particularly this post,

this thread: Computer Sleuths, why can some on SIG Forum see my pictures and others not?,

and the URL creslin posted. It's all explained already.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
Please read: SIGforum is now "secure",

particularly this post,

this thread: Computer Sleuths, why can some on SIG Forum see my pictures and others not?,

and the URL creslin posted. It's all explained already.

Which doesn't change the fact that, even though a new avatar was set up for me using a https address, the software doesn't accept it. The person who is hosting this new avatar, who is MUCH more computer savvy that I, doesn't understand it, either.

I am not yet running SSL on my side.
Your avatar is linked to an https version of my site (which does not yet exist).

Enabling SSL on my site is still a work in progress.
Until I complete the work on my side.. image links from my site will continue to be busted here.

quote:

Originally posted by creslin:
I am not yet running SSL on my side.
Your avatar is linked to an https version of my site (which does not yet exist).

Enabling SSL on my site is still a work in progress.
Until I complete the work on my side.. image links from my site will continue to be busted here.

Gotcha. I didn't see until just now that the url address had changed. And I appreciate the effort. And will wait for for the new and improved site. After all, it's only an avatar. But what I'm still confused about is that I am unable to load the other avatar url that was provided to me by another SF member, I'm told that it is "Unaccessable". *shrug*

I am hosting quite a few member's avatars, and was contacted shortly after the update to SIGforum to SSL, and added SSL to my hosting as well.

That seems to have "fixed" those avatars that were already being hosted, and no need to change the URL on the user's profile to HTTPS, as my site has code that replaces the request from HTTP to HTTPS.

However, after adding another user's avatar, (clubleaf) he could not get the SIGforum custom avatar feature in the user's profile dialog to accept the change.

The error returned is: "The provided avatar URL does not appear to be accessible."

Even if I simply hit the "update avatar" without changing anything, using http, https or no scheme/protocol and/or the optional authority colon and/or path component // and/or the www in the hostname, it made no difference.

I tried using every image file type to see if that would help, and it did not.

I asked a user who had hosted their avatar on a defunct domain to try using the URL of another user's avatar which was working fine and hosted on a SSL server and they were able to update using that URL without issue.

So, I am not certain why some SSL sites work, and why some do not.

I contacted Para and he is looking into things on this site, but sometimes the issues are not a simple thing to see as to why processes do not work, as there are several layers in the way all the information is handled by various points in between everything.

What I believe is when the SIGforum BBS parses the URL and verifies it is correct syntax, and/or the layer process responsible for verifying SSL is correct is failing to resolve due to a code issue, or that the SSL component I have installed is not compatible with the way the SIGforum processes the requests.

Since this issue is affected by more than my hosting, I am holding off until I hear back from Para, and as he is aware, I see no need to do anything but wait until he replies.

Hope that helps.

@sigmonkey: If you enter the URL for his avatar directly into your browser's address bar, does the avatar show up?

Yes. I posted it to the forum and it displays fine.

I can browse the image by the URL from 5 different browsers, including 2 browsers from my android.

I cannot change my avatar using any of the links, (and did not want to "break it" since it works), but even if I simply open the custom avatar dialog and "update avatar" using any link on my hosting platform, it returns the error I posted.

That tells me the forum software is either having an issue resolving, or establishing the secure socket between the forum to write to the database or not accepting the SSL as legitimate.

I no longer have the tools to do more from where I sit.

@sigmonkey, it just occurred to me: If it's SF's code that's balking at (some?) HTTPS URLs and you have a rewrite rule in your web server config, maybe you can just enter an HTTP URL?

SF can resolve the link no matter if the protocol is HTTP, HTTPS or left out.

The issue is the update function of the avatar dialog. But I cannot see why it is doing it as I do not have access suss it out.


All the avatars I am hosting work, even though the links use HTTP and not HTTPS.

If I (or anyone) tries to update the link to HTTPS (or even simply opening the dialog, changing nothing and pressing "update avatar" the result is the same error message.


Logs would/should show the com failure from the update call from the site code.

My site is using the same "Let's Encrypt" cert as the site your avatar is hosted on, and the CN is same syntax, and the DNS is both with and without www.

Have you tried to simply trigger the "update avatar" without changing the code for your profile?

Try that and let me know the result, and/or change you avatar to link I provided.

That would be helpful.

Here is your avatar link hosted on my site.
https://www.wootmonkey.com/upl...3114153-b88b7502.jpg
Try changing your avatar to it.

Now that SIGforum is secure, I have an interesting observation...

I use Brave as my primary browser as it's very clean & light IMO, plus it has embedded 'Ad Blocking' feature which makes things simple. My back-up browser is FireFox ESR, which I use as an alternate on an as needed basis as I consider it somewhat 'heavier' than Brave and a bit of a memory hog. I run an Ad Blocker add-on (AdGuard) on Firefox and the filters I have enabled are more restrictive than the built in filters in Brave. Typically, things that are NOT displayed or functioning correctly in Firefox will work just fine in Brave.

Here's where things get different...

My avatar was NO longer displayed after SIGforum went 'secure' using Brave, and I assumed I simply needed to move my avatar to a 'secure' https host. However, when I tried to change it, I got the same error that sigmonkey referenced. Specifically, I attempted to change my avatar by pointing my profile/custom avatar to a file stored on imgur. The error returned is: "The provided avatar URL does not appear to be accessible." After my unsuccessful attempt at using imgur, I sent an email to sigmonkey requesting that he host my avatar, and figured I'd be w/o an avatar until he was able to provide me w/ a 'secure' hosted avatar link.

That said, something somewhat unrelated led me to another discovery...

Ever since SIGforum became 'secure', the embedded browser on my Motorola Xoom (tablet) NO longer displays SIGforum at all. I do however have the Opera lite browser installed as that will actually run on that tablet (not much else does at this point).

Anyway, I was cruzin' SIGforum using Opera lite on my Xoom tablet and noticed that my avatar displays just fine there, so I then decided to try Firefox (on my PC). Curiously, there are NO issues at all w/ Firefox, and my avatar hosted on the 'unsecure' http website displays just fine....Weird.