How to Get Free Secure (SSL) Hosting for the Graphics on Your Facebook iFrame Tab Page

1 Oct 2011

If you have an iframe tab page on your Facebook Page, such as a custom landing page, you need to host anything that is called into the iframe on a secure server or anyone using Facebook in secure mode will get a security certificate error and won’t be able to see what’s on the tab page. This has been the case since Facebook switched from FBML to iframes a few months ago but as of today (October 1st), it is mandatory.

If you use one of the iframe apps to create your tab page, like Static HTML, in most cases the HTML text will be hosted on a secure server for you, so for anyone who has a strictly text-based tab page, this won’t apply to you. Once you add a graphic, photo, video, or form to that page, it does, and all of those things will need to be hosted on a secure server and most apps don’t do that for you. So, what do you do if you don’t have secure hosting already? Here are your options.

1. Contact your hosting company and tell them you need an SSL certificate for your domain. Most companies will charge a fee for this, typically $5 a month or so but some will offer it to their virtual hosting clients at not charge. Alternatively, you can pay for your own certificate, in which case there is an annual fee ranging anywhere from $50 to $150 a year. The second option is good for those of you who would have another purpose for a secure domain, like an ecommerce website. For the rest of you, I suggest going through your hosting company.

2. Set up an Amazon S3 account. It only takes a matter of minutes and you’ll get 5GB gigabytes of storage a month for free and then it’s extremely cheap if you use more. For most of you it won’t cost you anything for the first year and will then be only pennies per month after that.

3. Open a Dropbox account. Once you have downloaded the Dropbox application to your hard drive you simply drag your files into the “public” folder and then use the provided link to add the graphics to your tab page. Dropbox is free for up to 2GB of storage, which will be more than enough for most everyone.

Edit: A questions was asked in the comments that made me realize I forgot to mention a simple step to make sure your Dropbox hosted graphics were secure. Simply add an s to the http:// part of the Dropbox URL so it’s https://dl.dropbox.com…

Shameless self promotion alert: If you use Social Identities to design your custom landing page or other tab page, we host the graphics for our clients on a secure server at no additional charge.

http://www.facebook.com/gauthier.bros Gauthier Bros

For my custom tab, i use http://www.facebook.com/iframe.apps .

I’ve put my base url in the app and now my tab works with https users
Pingback: Lu la semaine dernière 11 octobre - Cédric Fontaine | Consultant internet, spécialiste commerce électronique.
Sarah

Thank you thank you! I have been searching for alternatives all morning. This will work great!
Tyy

According to my host, I have a shared SSL certificate that I was told would work. Do I need to do anything special when uploading my file to my hosting account or will it automatically attach when needed? A little confused by all this. Thanks!

http://www.socialidentities.com Hugh Briss

As long as any images you use on your Facebook tab page are hosted on your secure server you should be fine. Just add the graphics to the page like you would with any other web page but instead of something like you’ll use https instead.

Tyy

Thank you for the reply. I just found out from my host Hostgator, that since my site is a WordPress site I can not do this unless I change my domain to an https, which I don’t think I want to do. I guess it is an issue with WordPress. So I guess I need to figure out another solution for now. Is Dropbox fairly easy to use for this?

http://www.socialidentities.com Hugh Briss

Dropbox is extremely simple to set up and use. Just add the Static HTML app to host your HTML and then put your graphics in Dropbox and you’re all set.

Tyy

Great! I will give that a try! I appreciate your quick replies. Thanks!
Julian

I’m pretty new to all this so apologies if the question is a bit basic… I’m already a dropbox user, so I’m trying to upload graphics there for use on my facebook iframe tab. But when I add an image to my dropbox public folder and copy/paste the link, it looks like this: http://dl.dropbox.com/……..jpg. Presumably this isn’t right as it starts with “http” instead of “https”, or am I misunderstanding something? Any help much appreciated. Thanks.
http://www.socialidentities.com Hugh Briss

Hi Julian. Not a basic question at all and I should have mentioned that in the article so I’ll add that now. All you need to do is add an s to the URL so it would be https://dl.dropbox.com...
Julian

Great, thanks for the quick reply Hugh!

http://www.evilripper.net/ evilripper

great ideas, i will try amazon s3 for my application… mmm dropbox hasn’t mysql, php… it’s ok only for static page.

http://www.socialidentities.com Hugh Briss

I recommend using the Static HTML app because they host the page code on a secure server at no charge and then all you need to host on Dropbox are the grahics.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1446758209 Daniel Hewitt

Great article Hugh.

Quick question… If my app is static HTML but contains a form that calls a PHP script to process the fields, do I have to host that PHP script on a secure server somewhere? I assume the AWS S3 server wont cut it and I’ll have to sort out a secure host (as per option 1 in your suggestions)?

http://www.socialidentities.com Hugh Briss

Thanks, Daniel and yes, any form scripts will need to be hosted on a secure server. Some hosting companies do offer free SSL certs for virtual hosting clients.