Server Name Indication
Oh, why didn't I think of this before?
Some months ago, I think, srb2.org started using
CloudFlare. CloudFlare offers free "Universal SSL" for every website - normally one has to pay for SSL certificates. To be able to offer this, CloudFlare uses a technology called
"Server Name Indication" (SNI) that allows them to use the same certificate for many different domains. However,
some outdated operating systems and browsers do not support SNI.
srb2.org and mb.srb2.org are now using SNI, and the main site, srb2.org even uses
HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to force your browser to
always open the site via HTTPS, no matter if you manually remove the "s" from "https". See the technical differences of both domains by clicking
here and
here.
What can you do now?
If you're trying to open the website on your desktop PC, you're very likely using Windows XP or a very outdated browser, or both. Please read this page if this is the case:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/end-support-help
(in a nutshell, stop using that system please, and upgrade to a newer Windows version. You should do that independently of this SSL issue anyway.)
If you're trying to open the website on a mobile device, that device is probably too outdated to get the needed updates - for example, some Android devices might not receive a newer Android version anymore. You can try to install the
Chrome browser app to see if it fixes your problem; maybe only the built-in Android browser is unsupported. Later Android versions are using Chrome as default browser anyway.
And if that is not an option either, I've still got a workaround for reading: By using the Internet Archive's "save this website" function, you can force the Archive server to fetch a brand-new copy from any page you'd like to read, and then have a look at it, either with or without HTTPS. As the Internet Archive does not use SNI, even HTTPS will probably work on your device.
To save a page in the Internet Archive, just prepend "https://www.archive.org/save/" to the page name. For example, using the following link, you can very probably have a look at the Message Board main page with any device you like:
https://web.archive.org/save/mb.srb2.org/
Hope this helps! ^.^