How to combine multiple subdomains into 1 certificate through cPanel GUI

[dterrazas]

My domain is: http://colgate.edu
I ran this command: N/A
It produced this output: N/A
My operating system is: CENTOS 6.5
My web server is: apache 2.4.23
My hosting provider, if applicable, is:godaddy.com
I can login to a root shell on my machine : yes (never have though, SSH challenged :expressionless
I’m using a control panel to manage my site :Yes/cPanel Version 60.0 (build35)

Because I have no clue how to use an SSH command line interface, I am using a cPanel Plugin for LetsEncrypt.
I hit some sort of rate limit of certs issued for the colgate.edu domain. I did not know about the rate limit issues until it was too late. However, I read here that "The main limit is 20 Certificates per Registered Domain (20 per week). ".

So first off, I have only created 8 certs (listed below). but now Let’s Encrypt states I hit a rate limit (See image below)

• https://acconia.colgate.edu/
• https://admcms.colgate.edu
• https://seafaring.colgate.edu
• https://srsindia.colgate.edu
• https://arts240.colgate.edu
• https://blogs.colgate.edu
• https://blogsites.colgate.edu
• https://dronefest.colgate.edu

2. So what I want or need to do, is this…

Quoted from this documentation:
“If you have a lot of subdomains, you may want to combine them into a single certificate, up to a limit of 100 Names per Certificate. Combined with the above limit, that means you can issue certificates containing up to 2,000 unique subdomains per week. A certificate with multiple names is often called a SAN certificate, or sometimes a UCC certificate.”

but I do not know how to do this through the GUI interface in cPanel. I also cannot find instructions on how or what the command line instructions would be if I decided to tempt fate and use an SSH client (Scary for me )

[schoen]

Hi @dterrazas, are you a system administrator for Colgate University as a whole (or for some department there)?

A responsible party at the university could fill out the form at

https://letsencrypt.org/docs/rate-limits/#overrides

to request a rate limit exception for the university. (I believe they’ve been granted to other universities in the past.) This is free of charge, but it may take a few weeks to be processed.

Otherwise, I’m sure people here would be happy to talk you through using some of the command-line clients… but if there are a lot of people at your university who are likely to be trying to get certs from Let’s Encrypt, it might be a good idea to try to arrange some kind of centralized coordination with the IT people there, whether around providing standardized means that everyone at the school can use to get the certs, or around requesting an increase in the rate limits.