To Configure an SSL in your cPanel Dedicated Server or VPS.
Generating a CSR
1. Log into your server (e.g.
https://yourserver-name.co.uk/whm)
2. Once Logged in go to Account Information > List Accounts > Click on the CP Logo next to the domain your installing the SSL on.
3. A new tab will open and should log you into your cPanel page for the domain.
4. Scroll down to the 'Security' section and click 'SSL/TLS'.
5. Click the 'Generate, view, or delete SSL certificate signing requests.' to generate your Certificate Signing Requests.
6. Fill in the information at the top of the form (remember domain name will be specific to the SSL, so either www.testsite.com, testsite.com or subdomain.testsite.com).
7. Once details have been filled in, you can click 'Generate'. You will then be presented with the Certificate Request (CSR) which you will have to copy.
8. When you purchase an SSL order, this CSR will need to be submitted to generate a certificate which will work with the server.
** The server type would be a 'cPanel/WHM' server, you will likely be asked this when submitting the SSL order **
Validation
Some SSL providers can provide different methods of validating the SSL order.
Email Auth
The most common validation method is email authentication, which will send an email to a specific email address on the domain you're issuing the SSL too:
admin@DOMAIN
administrator@DOMAIN
webmaster@DOMAIN
hostmaster@DOMAIN
These can also be configured as Aliases to an existing account if you don't have these configured already.
File Auth
Alternative methods some providers use are File Authentication which will give you a txt file to upload to your site. The file does need to be web accessible, however if you have access this is the quickest and easiest method.
DNS Auth
DNS authentication will allow you to create a TXT record in the DNS zone of the site, which can take some time depending on DNS propagation.
Installation
Once you have the SSL, you can now install it.
1. Go back to the cPanel server and back to the ‘SSL/TLS’ page where you made your request.
2. Click on the 'Manage SSL sites' link.
3. Paste your certificate into the 'Certificate: (CRT)' textbox.
4. Since you generated the CSR on the server, the rest of the textboxes should fill in automatically
5. Scroll down and click 'Install Certificate'
SSL Redirects
Sites will load over http by default unless you specify or put in in redirect to load over https.
You can put in a redirect into your '.htaccess' file on your site, if you don't have one you can create one and add the following:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://DOMAIN.CO.UK/$1 [R=301,L]
This will then redirect all http requests to https.
