Forwarded domain not secure

[JQ77]

My domain from GoDaddy is being forwarded to my Goggle Sites website and it is working fine.  My question is that my Google website is secure, so why is the forwarded domain not secure?  I am just trying to understand.  I don't feel like that I should need an SSL certificate if the content is hosted on a secure site, but I could be wrong.  Thank you for any assistance.

[JesseW · Accepted solution]

Hi @JQ77. Thanks for being part of GoDaddy Community! When you add an SSL Certificate and route traffic to HTTPS instead of HTTP, you're actually using a different connection or "port". HTTP traffic usually works on port 80 while HTTPS  uses port 443. Our forwarding service does not accept HTTPS requests. So if traffic comes into your forwarded domain using HTTPS, it will try to come through a port that is not open, and you'll see an error. Essentially:

• HTTP > your forwarded domain --> HTTPS your Google site = This will work. 
• HTTPS> your forwarded domain = This will not work.

Hope that helps. 

[BMGRAHAM]

I have a related question.  I have a domain, let's call it mydomain.com, managed by GoDaddy. In the forwarding section I have forwarded it to https://actual-site.blogspot.com/p/click-on-photo-for-more-pictures.html 

When I type in "mydomain.com" it does forward to the secure site that it should.  However my browser is reporting that the web site isn't secure, even though it is.  How can I make it so that when people go to mydomain.com, they actually accessing a secure version of mydomain.com?

[JesseW]

Hi @BMGRAHAM. My guess would be that you're using your domain with masking. Our forwarding service doesn't work with HTTPS as you know. When you load a page that is masked, it simply loads the target page in an iframe on the page you're visiting. In order to have HTTPS, you need a connection between the browser and the server where the certificate is installed. It is a bit like having a clear bottle of water in a pond. The water in the bottle may be clean but in order to get to it, you would have to go through water that isn't clean. I hope that makes sense. 

If you're not using masking and this is happening, it may be that the redirect at Blogspot isn't working pushing traffic from HTTP to HTTPS.

[BMGRAHAM]

I am masking. I find it rather odd that in this day and age, forwarding
with masking doesn't support https! Will that change?

[JesseW]

@BMGRAHAM It might change one day. There have been suggestions to add the feature as a paid upgrade since it would require additional server resources for each certificate installed. However, I'm not aware of any plans to have this in the near future. 

[dtbutler]

I'm having the same issue. What would be an alternative? Maybe I'm using the wrong option. I don't mind if my domain name doesn't show in the address bar of my blog.

[BMGRAHAM]

If you don't need the domain name to show them I think you just need to
turn off masking. My issue is happening because I want masking.