All Questions(server)

I just installed an SSL Certificate on my server.

It then set up a redirect for all traffic on my domain on Port 80 to redirect it to Port 443.

In other words, all my http://example.com traffic is now redirected to the appropriate https://example.com version of the page.

The redirect is done in my Apache Virtual Hosts file with something like this...

RewriteEngine on
ReWriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^443$
RewriteRule ^/(.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [NC,R,L] 

My question is, are there any drawbacks to using SSL?

Since this is not a 301 Redirect, will I lose link juice/ranking in search engines by switching to https?

I appreciate the help. I have always wanted to set up SSL on a server, just for the practice of doing it, and I finally decided to do it tonight. It seems to be working well so far, but I am not sure if it's a good idea to use this on every page. My site is not eCommerce and doesn't handle sensitive data; it's mainly for looks and the thrill of installing it for learning.

UPDATED ISSUE

Strangely Bing creates this screenshot from my site now that it is using HTTPS everywhere...

This may be a bit of a noobish question, but I was taking a look at /etc/hosts on my new Xubuntu install and saw this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 myhostname

On most 'nixes I've used, the second line is omitted, and if I want to add my hostname to the hosts file, I'd just do this:

127.0.0.1 localhost myhostname

Is there a difference between these two files in any practical sense?

I'm looking for a command that checks the validity of the config files in Apache server on both Debian and RHEL distros. I need to do this prior to restart, so there will be no downtime.

Other than for historical reasons, is there is reason to have “www” in a URL?

Should I create a permanent redirect from www.xyz.com to xyz.com, or from xyz.com to www.xyz.com? Which one would you suggest and why?

Say you're running a server and you don't want to upgrade to Testing (Squeeze) from Stable (Lenny) to just install a required package or two.

What's the best way of installing only certain packages from Testing?