I was going to sign up at Saturnfans but seen the site doesn't even use ssl. What gives?

 

Pretty sure they did at some point. However, since they were not hosting transactions with sensitive information, an SSL certificate back in the day was $$. So there's the cost angle.

There is also the performance angle. Https with dynamic content means a lot of encryption and decryption of new content as it is generated (as opposed to static content). It takes time, bandwidth, and server resources etc and usually results in poor (slower) performance.

With today's servers, this is probably not so much of an issue. But because the site is not driven by selling items, the encryption strictly speaking is not needed.

So there are use cases where http is preferable over https.

 

Sounds good. Thanks, I don't really have any data to worry about, Just curious.