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Tell HN: Quick and free SSL hosting? Remember Dropbox...

8 points by mgeraci ↗ HN
I was working on integrating a custom iframe tab in a Facebook app, and was having a lot of trouble displaying it to users browsing FB with SSL enabled. I don't have a server with an SSL certificate, and didn't want to pay for a new host or bother with getting a certificate.

You know who does have an SSL certificate? Dropbox. It's certainly a hack, but you can serve the iframe document from your public folder, and it works really well. There are bandwidth caps (10GB/day unpaid, 250GB/day paid - https://www.dropbox.com/help/45), but it could be a great solution for some situations.

7 comments

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beaumartinez
They could stop serving your content at any moment though... Not a very robust solution.
Koldark
Agreed! Never trust a third party for your content.
HerraBRE
That's a strange attitude.

I don't see how a paid Dropbox account is somehow riskier than a leased vserver. As long as you abide by the ToS, anyway.

julesallen
What about App Engine or S3 if you're just serving static files?
HerraBRE
Neat hack! If you want a similar solution for something a bit more dynamic, all the http://pagekite.net/ sub-domains are SSL-enabled by default.

You run whatever HTTP server you like, PageKite operates as a front-end and handles SSL. The connection between your server and the PageKite front-end is encrypted as well.

Like Dropbox, there are bandwidth limits on the PageKite service, but for heavy users we'd be pretty open to negotiating - our public price structure is more meant for personal sites and prototyping. OTOH, for something like a Facebook app, 1GB probably goes a very long way.

JoachimSchipper
Neat hack, but certificates can be had for free nowadays[1,2].

[1] E.g. startssl.com.

[2] Of course, this means that the CA system is broken - you can't do any serious validation for $0.