We just realized that all of our webflow properties return this error when being viewed at any university: ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID
This is only happening when we publish a webflow site, be it with a custom URL or the ones webflow generates. If we export the site and put it up on another server with a self signed let’s encrypt SSL it works.
I’m no expert in the SSL arena, but this kind of looks like something is misconfigured on the automation side of SSL generation at webflow. All we did was check the SSL box on publish, and did the one click godaddy DNS update. All appeared to work great except that this one site happens to be for a university and nobody there can see the site working.
Can you provide a functional email or something? Absolutely all support channels on webflow just take me in circles. The chat bot is useless and hangs up on you. This is such a fringe case that there is definitely no support doc for it. I posted here because I found no other outlet that actually works.
But unless you’re at a university, it will probably work fine for you. I understand this may not be within the realms of the forums, so if there is a proper support channel I would gladly move this there, so long as it is not just a blanket statement to contact support, which I have found impossible to do with webflow. An email or something would be fine.
If it only affects users inside a specific network I would determine what it addresses are being returned for the resource queried. Check if there is and unexpected result.
Like I said, the issue is the university is identifying the SSL as invalid. Who knows if they have some strict setting or whatever, but when we host the site on our own server with a self signed let’s encrypt SSL it shows fine for the university. Webflow uses let’s encrypt as well. So we assume something in the SSL signing is missing or wrong for it to not pass the university network standards or something.
It’s a larger issue for a web shop because it means we made the decision to switch to webflow and use your hosting but now we learn that the SSL generation could mean an unknown number of viewers will just get served a broken site. It’s actually miraculous this was pointed out at all. But we have to have a webflow solution since we cannot host every site we build. That problem is precisely why we moved to webflow in the first place.
We did all the checking we could right down to cloning the site elsewhere and self signing the cert. All signs point to misconfiguration on webflow, but as a non-expert I can’t definitively state that, which is why we need support. If we can get all of our sites hosted elsewhere, aws, media temple, bluehost, and wpengine, to all show fine through the university network, but not anything from webflow, then it is not logical to assume there is an issue with the resources that are being blocked. In this case, it is jQuery.
I don’t know what the general protocol for checking in on this would be. I don’t know what could be missing from the generation that would cause a flag in any system. But someone on the tech team might. This would be a case for the right person on the support team if I can figure out how to get a hold of them.
For a user that is inside a network where an SSL issue is being displayed on the browser, test the dns resolution for the site in question. The the DNS lookup returns a different address(s) for that host name then you have isolated the issue to DNS and that you are not connecting to the correct resource.
If the DNS records are returned correctly then determine if the traffic is routed through a LAN proxy for the affected visitors. If the site is proxied on the LAN then see if a bypass resolves the issue.
These would be the first things I would check. I have a long background as an enterprise networking engineer. I don’t work for Webflow and can’t comment on what they do or would not.
Webflow Support is only available via the resources they share on the support page. If you want a tier three resource to assist I am available for hire.