# HTTPS on Stack Overflow: The End of a Long Road

DevFeed: [HTTPS on Stack Overflow: The End of a Long Road](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/https-on-stack-overflow-the-end-of-a-long-road-21593.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://nickcraver.com/blog/2017/05/22/https-on-stack-overflow/>)

Published: 2017-05-22T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Nick Craver](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/nick-craver.md>)

Topics: [Stack Overflow](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/stackoverflow.md>), [HTTP](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/http.md>), [Network](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/network.md>), [WebSocket](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/websocket.md>), [Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/latency.md>), [Open Source](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/open-source.md>)

Tags: [apis](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/apis.md>), [blog](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/blog.md>), [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [http](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/http.md>), [infrastructure](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/infrastructure.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [network](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/network.md>), [networks](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/networks.md>), [open-source](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/open-source.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [proxy](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/proxy.md>)

## AI overview

Stack Overflow deployed HTTPS by default across its Q&A websites in 2017 after several years of work. The article explains the infrastructure, application, performance, WebSocket, proxy, domain, and embedded-content challenges involved in the rollout.

## Source excerpt

Today, we deployed HTTPS by default on Stack Overflow. All traffic is now redirected to https:// and Google links will change over the next few weeks. The activation of this is quite literally flipping a switch (feature flag), but getting to that point has taken years of work. As of now, HTTPS is the default on all Q&A websites. We've been rolling it out across the Stack Exchange network for the past 2 months. Stack Overflow is the last site, and by far the largest. This is a huge milestone for us, but by no means the end. There's still more work to do, which we'll get to. But the end is finally in sight, hooray! Fair warning: This is the story of a long journey. Very long. As indicated by your scroll bar being very tiny right now. While Stack Exchange/Overflow is not unique in the problems we faced along the way, the combination of problems is fairly rare. I hope you find some details of our trials, tribulations, mistakes, victories, and even some open source projects that resulted along the way to be helpful. It's hard to structure such an intricate dependency chain into a chronological post, so I'll break this up by topic: infrastructure, application code, mistakes, etc. I think it's first helpful to preface with a list of problems that makes our situation somewhat unique: We have hundreds of domains (many sites and other services) Many second-level domains (stackoverflow.com, stackexchange.com, askubuntu.com, etc.) Many 4th level domains (e.g. meta.gaming.stackexchange.com) We allow user submitted & embedded content (e.g. images and YouTube videos in posts) We serve from a single data center (latency to a single origin) We have ads (and ad networks) We use websockets, north of 500,000 active at any given (connection counts) We get DDoSed (proxy) We have many sites & apps communicating via HTTP APIs (proxy issues) We're obsessed with performance (maybe a little too much) Since this post is a bit crazy, links for your convenience: The Beginning Quick Specs Infrast