The SSL certificates are useful as they encrypt and thus protect data. This makes them invaluable for organizations or people who have to deal with credit card information, ID’s and social security numbers, pass-codes to sensitive databases and accounts as well as other highly secured private information that should not be in the public domain. In order to set up Secure Socket Layer, in short (SSL), you need, not only an SSL Certificate from a Certificate Authority, but also a dedicated IP address for your site.

The IP address

In order to install a functional SSL certificate in your site, you must have a specific IP address that will be somehow permanent for that particular site. Essentially your domain must resolve to a dedicated IP address on the server or else the SSL certificate will not be purposeful. Remember that the server’s primary IP address is not necessarily the dedicated IP address and thus more often the SSL certificate will not be functional if you use the server’s primary IP address unless it is the dedicated one.

If you have a WHM/cPanel server, the wildcard certificate is not likely to work. This means that you will need to create a cPanel account for each sub domain requiring the SSL certificate and you must adjust the ‘domain field’ to show the sub domain name instead. If using a DNS server on the other hand, you must update the external DNS zone so that it matches the new dedicated IP address and then wait on the domain to take on the new IP address. Then you can change its address on the WHM and move on to the next step. The time between the updating of the DNS zone and the domain taking on the new IP address is likely to render the website temporarily inaccessible.

The SSL Certificate

Getting an SSL certificate requires creating a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) that you will send to the Certificate Authority, who will then give you the SSL certificates after some time. To create the CSR, first connect to the WHM interface as root. Then go to the section labeled as ‘SSL/TLS’ and click on the icon labeled ‘Generate a SSL Certificate and Signing Request.’

This will lead you to a form that you will fill with the correct information about your secure domain and when done, click on ‘Create’ to finish the procedure.

You will then copy the ‘Signing Request’ and then you can send it to the Certificate Authority.

When you get the certificates, install them on the server using the following steps.

First, connect to your WHM interface as root and go to the ‘SSL/TLS’ section where you have to click on the icon that says ‘Install a SSL certificate and set up the Domain’.

In the domain box, you will have to type in the correct name of the domain whose certificate you have. Once the domain name is correctly typed, just click randomly on the window. All the other information will automatically fill in. You will then replace the first section .crt with the new SSL certificate from the Certificate Authority and then click on ‘Submit’ to complete the installation.