Don't know if anyone else was affected, but somewhere between 19:10 (when I started a story) and 19:37 GMT (when I finished it) I started getting
An error occurred during a connection to storiesonline.net. The OCSP server suggests trying again later. Error code: SEC_ERROR_OCSP_TRY_SERVER_LATER
It cleared a few minutes after 20:00.
OCSP stands for Online Certificate Status Protocol. This has nothing to do with SOL. Your browser (like most modern browsers) uses the OCSP server to validate certificates. That server was temporarily unreachable. Here's a link that exlains how that works: https://blog.ascertia.com/what-is-ocsp-and-how-does-it-work.
Yep.
Nonetheless, SOL was unavailable because of it. I thought that reliability of the CA may be of some concern, and wondered if others were affected.
Yep.
Nonetheless, SOL was unavailable because of it.
It's most likely a setting in your browser where you can (temporarily) switch off checking the OCSP server but don't forget to switch it back on because it's an important security feature. Read the message and if it's not an indication that the certificate is false/invalid but that the server itself has a problem you can temporarily pass the check. You probably would have had the same problem with other sites.
You can also check your settings to see what happens on failure to connect. While it's less secure, you can (depending on OS/browser) set the system to behave so that failure to connect assumes the cert is valid.
