Highland Woodworking website satus

[Kent A Bathurst]

FYI. I've been buying from these guys since before there was an internet, and I lived 750 miles away. Now there is an internet, and I live 4 miles away. Still great people, products and service. Just received this email - thought I'd pass it along.


September 3, 2023

Dear Woodworker,

If you’ve tried to access the Highland Woodworking website in the past few days, you probably got a message saying the website may not be safe to connect to, and you were not allowed to connect.

We sincerely apologize to all who have been trying to connect with us this week, but were inconvenienced because you were not able to do so.

Please rest assured the security of our e-commerce platform is always of utmost importance to us.

Now after 5 days of our website being blocked, we finally received an explanation from our e-commerce provider, whose engineers were finding it difficult to solve the problem.

In early August, Highland installed our website’s new SSL certificate to replace the previous one which would expire in late August. We were applying for an Extended Validation SSL certificate (the highest level available), which requires two levels of validation. Today they finally realized that due to their SSL contractor’s mistake, our SSL certificate had been issued without the completion of the required second level of validation. This made our new SSL certificate invalid, which generated warnings to visitors, as well as completely blocking access to our website in most browsers.

(Note: certain browsers may give you the opportunity to bypass the warning without any negative repercussions. If your normal browser has been blocked, consider trying an alternate browser.)

As this is being written, our website is still down for most browsers. We are told that as soon as the second validation is completed and applied, our website will again be accessible to visitors. This may happen by Sunday, 9/3/23, or we may possibly experience additional delay due to the holiday. We look forward to being back soon to serve your woodworking needs.

Thank you for your patience and understanding!


The Staff at Highland Woodworking.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Kent, a few days ago when I was in the buy mode for a spokeshave, I ran into that problem with Highland. After several tries, I got through and then later couldn't get to their website again.

Glad to hear they are getting the problem resolved.

[Earl McLain]

Great to see a company provide a clear explanation to a problem. Far too often issues are covered or danced around. I really appreciate Highland's open communication.

[Stan Calow]

Thanks for passing that on. My preferred provider.

[Kent A Bathurst]

Still down. Their business must be getting slaughtered right now..........

[Michelle Rich]

9/5 got a privacy error...

[Dave Sabo]

Still down. Their business must be getting slaughtered right now..........

Perhaps not.

They did just for decades before the internet with walk in traffic and their catalog - which still goes out. You can always call them and order over the phone just like folks did for the last 40-50 years.

[Kent A Bathurst]

Perhaps not.

They did just for decades before the internet with walk in traffic and their catalog - which still goes out. You can always call them and order over the phone just like folks did for the last 40-50 years.

Or maybe what they call "technology" has recast people's habits in favor of expediency [on-line time to order versus phone] and dependency on information [in/out of stock; alternative items; price comparisons].

I'd venture to guess that walk-ins from Virginia [Commonwealth, not Avenue] added to people holding actual catalogs equal a very small fraction of their active customer base.

My hardcopy catalog is in storage with my buggy whip collection.

[Patty Hann]

Maybe they fixed the problem.
I was able to access the website just a few minutes ago.

[George Yetka]

Rockler has taken to tech warfare?

[Kent A Bathurst]

Rockler has taken to tech warfare?

That must be it - want to corner the market on blue cookies.