Certificate Wizard

Certificates serve to make your website more secure by encrypting information that is exchanged between your site and its visitors. Without SSL, information would be exchanged between your site and its visitors in plain text across the Internet. This would allow potentially malicious users to obtain and read the information your visitors and website are exchanging. SSL certificates make it difficult for malicious users to intercept communications between visitors and your website.

This feature lets you generate and manage SSL certificates, signing requests, and keys.

Important: In order to use SSL encryption, your website needs to run on a dedicated IP address. For more information about how to obtain a dedicated IP address, speak with your hosting provider.

Note: You will require a dedicated IP address to use for each of your certificates.

Generating a self-signed certificate

Self-signed certificates are generally reserved for intranet uses. For commercial websites, visitors will much more readily trust a certificate from an authority.

Many modern browsers warn users about self-signed certificates, stating that they should not exchange credit card information or any other sensitive data with the website they are visiting. Thus, if you wish to run an e-commerce business through your website, you will need to purchase a paid certificate by requesting a signed certificate.

Requesting a signed certificate

Selecting this option lets you create a signing request form. This form is required for obtaining a certificate from an SSL provider. Certificates from SSL providers allow your website's visitors to securely exchange sensitive information with your website, due to a third-party verification system. This step ensures your visitors that you are who you claim to be — a reputable website with which they can share, for example, credit card information.

When requesting a signed certificate, the SSL provider may require information in a specific way. If this is true for your SSL provider, take the necessary steps to ensure the information is presented in the required way.

Installing a certificate from an authority

To obtain an SSL certificate, you should use a third-party service. We recommend using Trustwave. For more information about Trustwave, you can visit their site here.

For a list of reputable companies we recommend, please visit our website here.