Easily Create a CSR and Install SSL on a Apache/Linux Server

In today's tips and tricks we show how easy it is to generate a CSR and install a SSL on your Apache/Linux server.

All right, so there's several different reasons why you would want to get an SSL certificate. Protect your site, encrypt data that's being transmitted across, and then, also, Google now has given great warnings to people that go to unsecure sites. See right up here in Chrome, anytime you enter in data somewhere and you don't have an SSL you get this "Not Secure." So, obviously, you don't want your visitors to see that and feel unsafe when they go to your website.
So now you purchased an SSL certificate from your hosting company. And let's say you have your own VPS server or you have, maybe, an addon domain on cPanel. And you need to add the SSL manually because their auto install tool will not install it automatically on an addon domain or a VPS, so you need to do it yourself. So let's follow along. It's pretty simple and I'll show you both ways. So this is WHM. This is the interface for your VPS or dedicated servers for Linux servers. So here in the little search field we'll just type in CSR. Generate an SSL certificate and sign your request. You don't really have to fill in this information because they would email you the CSR, but we're going to get it right away. Key size we're going to go ahead and do the recommended. Domain name, here you're just going to type in the domain name. And you would fill in the required information. And we'll just call it "Fix it in post." And down here you don't have to fill in this information. This is a big organization. If you have different SSLs for different parts of your domains you'd fill that in. But that's not necessary. We're not going to do a passphrase and you're going to hit Create. And it's going to generate a bunch of different private keys, certificates, and signing request. This is the one that we're after.
So that's how you generate a CSR in WHM. If you're inside cPanel-- Now, getting your cPanel might look different than the one I'm in, but they are all the same. They just have a different interface. Or, not interface, it's a skin. I can't remember if this is called Lantern or X3. I think this is Lantern. There it is, Paper Lantern right there. So anyways, I just type in SSL, go inside here, click SSL. So here you're going to have kind of the same options as in WHM. And what we're looking for here is the certificate signing request. We want to generate. And then kind of the same process. You're going to put in the domain name. Fill in the same information, it's the exact same thing. And then and it Generate and it's going to generate that same CSR. Now this cPanel is on the same server as my WHM. So we're actually just going to go ahead and install it and go through the WHM. But, again, a lot of people don't have servers so this is how you would do it for an addon domain on your cPanel account.
So you want to make sure that you copy all the hyphens in the certificate, all the way up to the hyphens here for beginning certificate. You're going to go into your SSL Manager. After you have it set up it's going to ask you to provide a CSR, or a Certificate Signing Request. You're going to paste that into here. And as long as you filled in the information from the generate portion of it, you should see your domain name listed right here. Now, one thing that a standard SSL will do is this will protect the www version and the non-www version of your website. So no matter which way you have it resolving, it will resolve and protect both of them. Now, if you got something which is called a UCC certificate, we'll cover that later in a different video. But basically, you would have to add the www and the non-www in SSL. But, again, we'll cover that in a later video.
Sorry about that. Phone, someone's calling me. I'm important. All right, so go ahead and paste that in there. Verify the domain name's correct. We accept all this great stuff. Agree and hit Request Certificate. And then now you're usually going to get an interface that says 50%, 25%, or something. Now, my domain name is in my account so it's going to automatically verify the domain for us. Now, if your domain was with a different registrar than the company you bought your SSL certificate, eventually it's going to show you that you need to validate the domain. Because how an SSL works is you're actually protecting the domain and they want to make sure that you are the owner of that domain. So what it would do would be, it would say, put this unique ID number as a text record. So it would give you this long, random generated, text record. .............