Verification is the third of six steps to enabling SSL on your website. See our overview of all six steps, here.

Based on the selection made in step two, you will be verifying your order via email or DNS record.

The Certificate Authority (CA - Digicert, GeoTrust, Symantec, Sectigo etc) will send a verification email directly to the email address selected during the SSL Configuration process, which must be reviewed and the instructions followed.

The email address to which the verification email can be sent includes:

If none of these email addresses exist, it is recommended that one be created - or that a simple email forward from one of the above addresses to another email account that does already exist.

Once approval has been given via the verification email, the Certificate Authority will proceed to the next step of issuing the SSL Certificate.

If this verification email is not received, lost, or otherwise needs to be resent, the Reissuance process can be utilized to re-initiate the verification process. Reissuance can also be used to change your verification method between email and DNS. Please refer to the Reissuance section of our help documentation.

If verification via email proved problematic, verification can also be performed by applying a specific DNS record to your domain name. The required record will be included in your order confirmation email from the the Certificate Authority (CA - Digicert, GeoTrust, Symantec, Sectigo etc)

The Certificate Authority will check for the existence of the required DNS record on a schedule of decreasing frequency. Initial queries for the existence of the record occur every few minutes, followed by every half hour, hour and then several hours.

Once the required DNS record has successfully located, the Certificate Authority will proceed to the next step of issuing the SSL Certificate.

If you have one or more DNS Hosting services with Webnames.ca, they can be accessed below.

For customers of our Web Hosting services, the DNS record will be inserted into the DNS section of your Hosting Control Panel.

If you have purchased an OV (Organization Validation) or EV (Extended Validation) certification, which are identifiable by either OV or EV in their product name when you made your purchase, then additional validation steps will apply to you.

See: ORGANIZATION VALIDATION

See: EXTENDED VALIDATION

Once the necessary validation steps have been completed, step four - issuance, will commence.