A childhood story book that still resonates strongly with me today was “The Little Engine that Could” by Watty Piper.  A simple story of how obstacles can be overcome through the power of positive thinking.

The little steam engine of the story starts off being unable to pull the train up the hill.  Motivated by positive thinking ranging from I think I can, morphing to I know I can  results in success.

Persistence will be Rewarded

The moral of the story is not to give up even if success takes time and multiple attempts.  You can do it.  Of course this not always true, but by being persistent you will at least get you as far as you can go.

About six months ago I decided to implement secure socket layer (ssl) security for this website.   While it may sound simple, this was not the case.

My journey to Security

SSL enables viewers of the website to be sure of the owner and data transfers to and from the site are encrypted to ensure the information transferred cannot be intercepted.

To do this the web server needs to be certified by a trusted third party.  There are a number of ways to do this.  To make a long story short, six months ago I chose the simplest method and thus began my journey of persistence.

As is so often the case with technology the unexpected rears its ugly head and what should have been simple led me down a long path of encountering and resolving unplanned difficulties, lots of them.

However, finally I prevailed and not only is this site now accessed through https (i.e., ssl) my mail server is now a separate sub- domain (best practice) and all are using a content delivery network (Cdn)  called cloud-flare.

Persistence paid off, I can and did do it.