Correct approach for multiple domains - one cert or several?

[sahsanu]

Hello @Kris7,

@Kris7

However, I can't get both certs working at the same time. Every time I tweak the individual virtual host config files and then try to reload, one works and one fails. The one that fails tells me the cert is only good for the other domain:

www.niftydomain.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is only valid for the following names: cooldomain.com, www.cooldomain.com

I suppose that is because you don't have NameVirtualHost *:443 directive defined and/or your default-ssl config file doesn't contain <VirtualHost *:443>.

Check what is defined for both directives, go to your apache root conf dir (/etc/apache or /etc/httpd or whatever it is on Centos 6) and execute these commands:

grep -ri VirtualHost *
grep -ri NameVirtualHost *

This will show if you have defined a VirtualHost with an ip or an * and the same for NameVirtualHost, you should have all of them as *:443.

Also, you should check the Apache error log files, maybe they will show you more info about the issue.

@Kris7

Am I taking the right approach? Should I have a separate cert for each domain (1 for niftydomain.com, one for cooldomain.com, and so on)?

The approach is not right or wrong, it is up to you. Anyway, if you have a lot of subdomains you should take care of Let's Encrypt rate limits, maybe for those, you want to add all of them in one cert instead of one per sub domain because you could reach the limits.

@Kris7

By the way, is there any way to turn off the site's search feature? It overrides my browser's search and makes it impossible to use ordinary page search.

It is a feature of the forum software "Discourse"... you can press Ctrl-F twice and you will get what you want, the browser search bar but keep in mind that Discourse doesn't show all the content of the page you are seeing so your browser couldn't be accurate ;).

Cheers,
sahsanu