https: images and css files

[kmm2908]

In order to avoid mixed content (secure and non-secured) on a https page on our site I have amended all image and css links to https.

However, as this will now mean the entire site (including http pages as well as https) accessing some images and all css images through a https link is this likely to result in a noticeable slow down of page loading due to the increased workload on the server?

What does everyone else think about the benefit of adding separate css, footer and header files for the https pages? Would this be a better way to go with regards to page load times?

Look forward to everyone's opinion and thanks in advance!

[speed]

I'd break the site in to two parts, secure and non-secure or if this isn't practical then use relative paths.

If you link to the CSS with a relative path then it'll load over http or https depending on the calling page, if all the images in the CSS are also using relative paths then they to will load over http or https depending on the calling page.

Where you have <img> tags in the page again if they are all using relative paths the images should just load over http or https depending on the calling page.

[Dubbya]

Using secure mode (https://) to serve up pages in "http://" will cause a noticeable reduction in performance. It's bad practice.

Here's a trick I use to avoid the "mixed content" message.

When linking to images or files that are used in both the secure and non-secured pages, try using relative URLs.

Here's a page outlining some additional issues to look out for.
IE Mixed Content - Page Contains Both Secure and Nonsecure Items | Zorked!

I'm pretty sure you're using include files, so if you want to specify an absolute path, you might want to use a script to check for a secure or non-secured session. If it's secured, just append an "s" to the "http".

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