Speed and Security: A Better User Experience with HTTP/2 & Let's Encrypt
DPA12 Development, Programming and Architecture
Location: Cotton Row
TUESDAY, 4:15 - 5:00 p.m.
When it comes to web pages, speed is always important. Users leave if a site takes too long. Google ranks faster sites better. Our browsers, computers, and smartphones have all evolved, but HTTP/1.1 was last updated in 1999. In internet years, that's 5 lifetimes ago. Now, HTTP/2 has emerged as a modern update for serving content to users, quickly and securely. In this session, we will discuss HTTP/2, its improvements, challenges, and opportunities for web developers in higher ed. This speed comes at a cost - HTTP/2 is, for now, only servable via HTTPS, so we will explore easy SSL generation with Let's Encrypt, a new certificate authority offering free SSL certificates.
Presenters
Mike Richwalsky
Executive Director of Marketing and Creative Services, John Carroll University
Mike Richwalsky is executive director of marketing at John Carroll University, located in Cleveland, Ohio, where he is responsible for web development, social media, and other electronic communications as well as print and video marketing efforts. Richwalsky has presented at higher education conferences in the US and UK, including HighEdWeb, EduWeb, Institutional Web Management Workshop, EduComm, J.Boye, Coalition for Networked Information and the Carnegie Mellon University Digital Libraries Colloquium. He blogs at highedwebtech.com.