Installing an SSL Certificate through SiteWorx

This tutorial will explain how to install several different types of SSL certificates on your account through your SiteWorx control panel. Before you attempt to install an SSL certificate on your account you should have a brief understanding of what an SSL certificate is.

What is an SSL certificate?

A digital certificate is an electronic document which links a public key to a person or company in a public key infrastructure, enabling the user to send encrypted and digitally signed electronic messages. The certificate identifies the user and is required to verify his digital signature. The certificate contains information about the identity and public key of the person/company as well as the certificate's expiration date. Furthermore, the certificate may contain information about the usage of the certificate. SSL certificates may be aquired from Downtown Web Domains.

CA-signed certificate

A CA, or Certificate Authority, authorizes certificates by signing the contents using its private key. Certificate Authorities are well known authorities, whose signatures are known and trusted by default on most browsers. By signing other certificates, they act as a digital notary.

Self-signed certificate

A self-signed certificate is not signed be a Certificate Authority, but is signed by yourself. Your server, in a sense, becomes the Certificate Authority. However, because browser's will most likely not be familiar with your signature, pages with a self-signed certificate will often cause client browser's to issue a warning message.

Installing an SSL certificate

In order to install an SSL certificate on your site, you'll need to have your site located on a dedicate or static IP address. This is a MUST for an SSL certificate. If you're site is not located on a static IP address, contact us.

Once your site is located on a static IP, follow these steps to complete the SSL Certificate tutorial:

Creating a Self-Signed Certificate

Once you've logged into your SiteWorx account, you should see a button on the left menu that says "SSL Certificate". Click on this button to continue. Your screen should look like this:

You should now be on the SSL Certificate page. You'll see three options. We're going to focus right now on "Create Self-Signed Certificate". The other two options will be explored later in this tutorial. Click on the first link to continue. Your screen should look like this:

Fill in the information for the certificate (all fields are required), paying special attention to the Common (domain) Name. The domain name you specify in the Common Name field must be for the *exact* domain you want the SSL certificate to be valid for. Therefore, supplying "johnsmith.com" will be different than "www.johnsmith.com". Once you're finished, your screen should look like this:

Click the "Generate Certificate" button and SiteWorx will create the certificate and install it on the server. The Certificate page will refresh and you should now see that you have a certificate installed. You can now access files securely by going to https://johnsmith.com/filename.html. Your screen should look like this:

Your Self-Signed Certificate is now installed!

Creating a CA-Signed Certificate

Once you've logged into your SiteWorx account, you should see a button on the left menu that says "SSL Certificate". Click on this button to continue. Your screen should look like this:

You should now be on the SSL Certificate page. You'll see three options. We're going to focus right now on "Create CA-Signed Certificate". The last option will be explored later in this tutorial. Click on the second link to continue. Your screen should look like this:

Fill in the information for the certificate (all fields are required), paying special attention to the Common (domain) Name. The domain name you specify in the Common Name field must be for the *exact* domain you want the SSL certificate to be valid for. Therefore, supplying "johnsmith.com" will be different than "www.johnsmith.com". Once you're finished, your screen should look like this:

Click on the "Generate Certificate" button. You will now be taken to the Certificate Signing Request page. The top box contains your CSR which you will need to provide to your certificate vendor. The box beneath is where you can paste the certificate information your vendor supplies. Your screen should look like this:

Click Install, and your CA-Signed cert will be installed. Note that if you leave this page, you can return to it again by clicking "Install CA-Signed Cert" from the SSL main page.

The Certificate page will refresh and you should now see that you have a certificate installed. You can now access files securely by going to https://johnsmith.com/filename.html. Your screen should look like this:

Your CA-Signed Certificate is now installed!

Migrating an Existing Certificate

Once you've logged into your SiteWorx account, you should see a button on the left menu that says "SSL Certificate". Click on this button to continue. Your screen should look like this:

You should now be on the SSL Certificate page. You'll see three options. We're going to focus right now on "Migrate Existing SSL Data Files". Click on the this link to continue. Your screen should look like this:

You now need to enter the private key for your existing certificate in the top box, the CSR from your existing certificate in the middle box, which is optional, and the certificate in the last box. Your screen should look like this:

Click the "Install" button to install your exisiting certificate on your server. You should now see that your certificate was merged successfully. Your screen should look like this:

Your exisiting certificate is now installed!

Troubleshooting

When creating a self-signed or CA-signed cert, you might run into a couple error messages that may seem a little bit confusing. The first error message is "You have specified a non-existing pointer domain and you have reached your quota for pointer domains" and the other is "You have specified a non-existing subdomain and you have reached your quota for subdomains."

What happens in the first case is that you supplied a pointer domain (a domain that doesn't end with your SiteWorx account domain) as the Common Name in the SSL form. In order to speed up the SSL creation process, the SiteWorx will first attempt to create the pointer domain before continuing with SSL creation. However, if you have reached your quota for pointer domains, SitewWorx will be unable to add the pointer domain, and thus unable to continue with SSL certificate creation.

The same applies if you specify a non-existant subdomain as the Common Name and you have reached your quota for subdomains.

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