Activating SSL for your account

See this Knowledge Base article for information on purchasing a discounted SSL certificate through DiscountASP.NET

The following steps are necessary to activate SSL for your account.

Note that the steps are different for a Domain Validated certificate and a certificate that uses Full Organization Validation. These instructions are for Domain Validated certificates.

1 Activate the SSL add-on in the SSL manager.
When the SSL add-on is activated, you will receive two email notices, one verifying the SSL add-on activation, and another verifying the activation of the UniqueIP/Unlimited subdomain add-on. The UniqueIP/Unlimited subdomain add-on is necessary because the use of a personal SSL certificate requires that your account has a unique IP address. The Unique IP add-on is included in the price of the SSL add-on.

2 After you receive the activation notices, go back to the SSL manager and generate a CSR.
A CSR is a public key that we generate on your web server. It is used to validate specific information about the web server and your organization. The CSR is generated based on the Organization Information that you provide in Control Panel. The common name can effect on which type of certificate you can use. See the different types of common names below.

Common Name: example.com
If you wish to secure www.example.com and example.com, the Common Name is: example.com.

Common Name: subdomain.example.com
If you wish to secure a subdomain, such as secure.example.com, the Common Name is: secure.example.com. With this type of common name https://secure.example.com is secure, but https://example.com and https://www.example.com will cause 'Common Name Doesn't Match' warnings.

Common Name: *.example.com
If you wish to secure a wildcard that will work on any subdomain, such as order.example.com, the Common Name is: *.example.com. With this type of common name https://anysubdomain.example.com is secure, but https://example.com will cause 'Common Name Doesn't Match' warnings.

3 Send the CSR to the certificate authority
When your Organization Information is submitted, we will generate a CSR* and display it in the SSL manager, along with the pertinent web server information. If you obtain a certificate through us, we will transmit the CSR to the certificate authority when you click the "Click to purchase" link and complete the order. Simply complete the "admin contact information." The email address you specify in the admin contact information section is where the verification email and the SSL certificate will be sent.

If you are purchasing an SSL certificate directly from a third party SSL certificate authority, copy the CSR from the text box (the CSR begins with -----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- and ends with -----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----) and provide the CSR to your SSL certificate authority in whatever manner they require.

4 Wait for the verification email from certificate authority
A Domain Validated certificate will normally require that you click a link in a verification email from the certificate authority to demonstrate that you have access to the domain used in the certificate. Once you do that, the certificate authority will send the SSL certificate to you.

5 Submit and finish!
Copy the SSL certificate received via email and submit it in the SSL manager. Simply copy the code from the email and paste it into the certificate field on the SSL Manager page. The certificate field is below the field containing the CSR. Once your certificate is submitted, we will install it on your account.

Finally, test your web site using HTTPS with different browsers to ensure that the SSL installation is working properly.

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Article ID: 138, Created: 11/11/2008 at 4:02 PM, Modified: 3/18/2026 at 5:05 PM

Activating SSL for your account

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