Struggling with Buying and Installing SSL on Your cPanel? Here is Some Help

A Helpful Guide to Buy and Install SSL Certificate on cPanel

When you decided to buy an SSL certificate, it considers many things; first, you need to search for a reliable certificate provider and another checklist.  Multiple SSL providers are there who offer the lowest price SSL for website security. Before buying SSL, you need to look for their after-sales support, price, certificate types. You must first assess the website needs as which kind of certificate is required.

Generally, there are three types of SSL validation: Domain Validation, Organization Validation, and Extended Validation.

Domain Validation: It is a primary level of validation in which only domain ownership is verified. There is no need to submit business-related documents or check 3rd party sources. Due to domain validation, it will take a few minutes in issuance. Either you need a single-domain SSL, or multiple domains, this type of certificate will help you lot.

Organization Validation: Organization Validation requires domain validation plus business authentication which includes validation of business documents. This type of certificate helps the business to establish the identity of their business over the web. It will take 2-4 days in issuance as business verification is involved.

Extended Validation: Extended Validation bears the highest authentication; hence; it takes 5-6 days in issuance. A green address bar boosts the confidence of visitors and lures them to visit the website. In the long run, the overall sales of an organization may get boosted. The price of such a certificate is a bit costly compared to domain and organization validation certificate.

After deciding the certificate type, you need to make a purchase decision. As discussed above, you will get cheap SSL certificates from reliable certificate providers. Once you have purchase certificate by paying the amount either via credit card, PayPal or any source, you will enter a technical zone where you will be asked few things like CSR, contact information to be displayed on the certificate, domain rights, document validation (If require).

What should you have before you buy an SSL certificate?

CSR: A CSR or certificate signing request is a text that needs to be generated using your web server before you order the SSL certificate. The certificate authority makes use of this information encrypted in the CSR (Domain name, public Key, organization name, etc.) for creating your SSL certificate. Private Key is also created with the CSR, but it should be saved in notepad as it is a very confidential part of a certificate.

Accurate contact information in WHOIS record: When you order an SSL certificate for a given domain name, the certificate authority has the responsibility of ensuring that you control the domain that you are seeking the SSL certificate for and that you have the authority to order the SSL certificate.  Some CAs will even call the phone number that is listed in the WHOIS record, and some may also send an email addressed to the email registered there to make sure that the correct information is contained in the case of an organization and extended validation certificate. Sometimes, there is also a need for WHOIS information to complete the validation process.

Validation documents for the business: Your business will need to be validated if you are placing an order for a high assurance certificate. Certificate authorities may check online databases put out by the government to verify if your business is registered, but they may still require you to send the proper government registration documents if they are not able to locate your business. Every certificate authority has its requirements for validating a business. After validation, the certificate authority issues a certificate to a certificate requester.

So now, you have your SSL certificate. Congratulations, you are now all set to go to HTTPS instead of depending on the insecure HTTP. Your customers would notice this, and they would love the fact that they can feel safe while interacting with your website.

Install SSL on cPanel:

Well, there is just one step remaining. You have still not installed the certificate on your server so that you can switch to HTTPS. Well, here we are going to go through the steps that you will need to take for installing your certificate using cPanel after you buy an SSL certificate. We hope you will find these tips useful when you are doing your installations. So without further ado, let us jump right in.

• Login to cPanel
• Now, browse to SSL/TLS Manager > Certificates (CRT) > Generate, view, upload or delete SSL certificates
• You will have an empty box in which, you should Upload a New Certificate now, click the Browse button and locate your SSL Server Certificate file your_domain_com.txt.
• Click the Upload
• Now, browse the Go Back link to return to SSL/TLS Manager.
• Again, click SSL/TLS Manager and browse for Setup an SSL certificate to work with your site. (If this option is disabled, you will need to contact them to complete your SSL setup.)
• Select the domain from the Domain drop-down menu and assign a certificate to it. The server will fetch the correct certificate and private key itself.
• Open CA-Bundle (Root and Intermediate) file with notepad and Copy-and-paste all the contents of the file into the Ca Bundle (CA BUNDLE)
• Click on Install Certificate. Now, your certificate is installed. You can check the SSL checker to see whether the certificate is installed correctly or not.

At Last: The process of buying SSL and its installation requires somewhat technical knowledge. Moreover, many resellers provide early renewal benefits too. Generally, SSL certificates are available with up to 2-year validity.