SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral. SSL is an industry standard and is used by millions of websites in the protection of their online transactions with their customers.
To be able to create an SSL connection a web server requires an SSL Certificate. This guide will take you through generating SSL certificate signing request and once installing the certificate that is already generated.
On CWP you can only install an SSL certificate through the root account in the server. So to do this,
- Open your browser and type “yourdomain.com/whm” or “youripaddress/whm”.
- Provide the correct login root credentials to access the CWP dashboard.
- Navigate to WebServer Settings >> SSL Certificate.
Generating the CSR
- Click Generate CSR and fill in the details on the form displayed. Then click Generate.
*Country codes are usually two letter that annotate to your country
- Copy the CSR generated and save it elsewhere. You can also choose to send the CSR copy as an email.
- Access your Comodo’s portal to get the SSL certificate. In this case, I will access https://secure.instantssl.com/products/SSLIdASignup1a to get Free 90day SSL from Comodo.
- On the website, paste your CSR in it’s place. On the Webserver type, fill Other since CWP is not explicitly listed on by Comodo on the issuance form. Click Next.
- The next part will be the domain control validation. Here you can use 3 validation types: Email validation, HTTP/S validation or DNS validation. In our case, we’ll use email validation. At this point, go back to cwp and create an email [email protected]. Click Next
- Provide your contact details on the form as guided. Note that some fields are mandatory. Complete the form by clicking Next. Now an email has been sent to [email protected] for you to validate domain control. Access the email and follow the instructions there to validate.
SSL Validation
- Validation takes 1-5 minutes. Once done, you will be emailed the certificate. Alternatively, you can download it by logging in to your portal at Comodo and download a zipped file of your SSL certificate.
- Copy the key and use it to generate the SSL Certificate from your Comodo Portal.
- Download the generated certificate and uncompress the .zip.
- These are the files you should see after the installation.
- Open the Plain Text Folder.
- Open the files shown above in a text editor.
- Access cwp as root and navigate to WebServer Settings >> SSL Certificates >> Manual Install. Select your domain name in the form displayed.
- Copy, in full, the contents of domain.com.crt to the section labelled Certificate *:
- Then the Private Key * section should auto fill as it’s obtained from the server. Finally, copy the contents of COMODORSADomainValidationSecureServerCA.crt to the Certificate Authority: section.
- Click the three buttons, first Validate Certificate, then Generate Intermediate Certificate then Save. You should get a notification that the process has been successful.
- Your SSL has now been installed – but we aren’t through just yet. We normally want the https to automatically appear on the website without having to type it. So we need to force all http traffic to redirect to https. This can be done via the .htaccess file for your domain’s Document Root.
- Access the Document Root of your domain, normally it’s /home/username/public_html and create a .htaccess file. If one exists, just use that instead. Add the following content to your .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
If you complete this successfully then you’re good to go.