Another Win - Forcing SSL and Untangling Apache Configuration Files

I posted a while back that I'd enabled SSL on one of my public domains for the first time.  I was running into issues with forcing SSL though.

The specific issue was that I'm running two websites on the Linode host - https://wigglit.com and http://unixfool.us.  One is using SSL certs when the other is not.  Each website had it's own VirtualHost configuration file.  When testing, I was able to reach https://wigglit.com without issue, but when going to http://wigglit.com, to ensure I'd be redirected to https://wigglit.com, the redirect was failing.  That issue causes problems in meeting Google's searching/indexing requirements.

I found that I had to create a third VirtualHost config file, specifically for the redirect to port 443.  So, I have a configuration file for unixfool.us:80, wigglit.com:80 (for the redirect to port 443), and wigglit.com:443.

I'd been struggling with this for days.  It was important that I have both wigglit.com:443 and unixfool.us:80, running on the Linode host, as I use unixfool.us to share photos.

I've been posting quite a bit about using AI/LLMs to assist in solving computing issues.  I'd previously been using ChatGPT.  I sometimes am frustrated with ChatGPT as I've to babysit it a lot - sometimes it's instructions aren't clear and I've also caught it sharing bad data more than once.  I know just enough to be able to question the data it offers.  I tried to leverage ChatGPT again with the SSL/Apache issue, but mid-stream, got frustrated and dediced to try a different LLM.  

I used Gemini (since I already have a Google account and heavly use Google tools).  I immediately noticed that Gemini appears to be the better AI, as it's answers were more clearly understandable (I didn't have to ask for clarification).  Also, I didn't catch it sharing bad data or questionable answers to my issue.  Usually, I am very clear in how I present the problem to the LLM, and in this case, it was no different.  I described the issue, shared the architectural layout of the Apache server and how I had it currently configured.  It was a decent paragraph-worth of information.  Gemini took the info and offered a clean solution!

I think I'll be using Gemini going forward.