OVERVIEW
Configuration is the second of six steps to enabling SSL on your website. See our overview of all six steps, here.
CSR Key Generation
Configuration
Validation
Issuance
Installation
Site Seal Installation
STEP TWO: CONFIGURATION
Configuration consists of submitting the following information so that your request can be validated and SSL Certificate issued:
Information from your webserver (CSR key)
Requestor information details (Individual and/or organization information)
The email address that SSL Certificate should be sent to once generated
The steps below should be followed once a current CSR has been generated.
For more information on CSRs, please see step 1: Generating a CSR
For a comprehensive guide to configuring, validating, and installing your SSL certificate, please see our SSL Certificate Guide
Process Overview
Locate and click on the domain name associated with your unconfigured certificate
Paste in your CSR key in its entirety. (See the article, here, for more information) NOTE: For Extended Validation SSL certificates, the physical address on the domain's registrant profile must match the province/state and country of the CSR
Choose verification via Email or DNS
The certificate authority (CA) that will ultimately issue your certificate needs to know that you own and control the associated domain name. This is done by either them sending you an email to a predetermined address, or by having your insert a specific record into the DNS of your domain. The next step is therefore to choose the verification method of choice:
Verification of your control of the domain name can be performed either by:
Responding to a verification email that is sent to a predetermined email address, or
Inserting predetermined DNS records into the DNS zone for the domain.
Verification via Email
Specify the Verification email address that the Verification Email and eventual SSL Certificate will be sent to once generated. Only one of several generic predetermined alternatives can be used.
The generic, predetermined addresses are:
Verification via DNS
When selecting DNS as a Domain Validation method, after clicking Continue you will be presented with the specific DNS records to insert into your DNS Zone. This task is done via your DNS provider. If Webnames is your DNS Provider, please refer here for our DNS usage guide.
The issuing Certificate Authority will automatically query your domain for the presence of the required DNS record. Typically lookups happen at an interval of diminished frequency, for example, once every 5 minutes, then once every 15 minutes, then 30, 60, etc.
Specify the Administrative Contact information for the Certificate. This is typically the domain’s existing Administrative or Technical Contact. Do not use any shift characters in any of the enrollment fields. If your company has an & or @ symbol in its name, you must spell out the symbol or omit it from the related Contact field.
Note: This information should match the WHOIS information for the domain. Additionally, the WHOIS information for the domain must be publicly viewable so that the applicant information submitted via this step can be verified via a WHOIS lookup by the Certificate Vendor (GeoTrust, Symantec etc.).
In the case of Organizationally Validated SSL Certificates, domain privacy services typically need to be disabled so that it can be shown that the domain, certificate, and business/organization are all representative of the same party.
Webnames WHOIS Lookup |
Include Technical Contact Information, if different than that of the Administrative Contact defined above.
Include Organization Information, as available for all Organization Validated certificates, (this section only appears for Organization Validated certificates)
Click Continue to proceed to the next page.
Once the above information has been submitted, step three - validation and and step four - issuance will commence