How to get SSL certificate, I have SSH and cPanel

You can very well setup letsencrypt on namecheap shared hosting with autorenew, you can see this post of mine.

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I could not understand what to do. I know English, but this sound different. :disappointed:

Hi @Dilip, this is asking you to create a file at a specific location on your web site. Do you know how to do that in general? For example, if I asked you to create http://appen.pw/hello/greetings.txt, would you know how to do that?

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By the way, if anyone knows how to word it better - I’m open to suggestions :slight_smile:

@Dilip, what exactly seemed to be confusing to you? The concept of “webroot” for example or something else?

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Yes, I can do that. But under webroot, it was asking for something already exists ( I thought so ). Thanks :grateful:

It could be my lack of experience with Let's Encrypt. It sounded like under webroot, something is already installed.

webroot/.well-known/acme-challenge/" directory,

I do not have anything called acme-challenge installed. I don't know whether ".well-known " should also exists before I proceed further. Thanks.

Hi,

The intended idea here is that you just tell Certbot where the webroot directory is, and it will take care of everything else (it will create .well-known/acme-challenge and the necessary files there).

The webroot directory refers to the directory where, if you create a file text.txt, it would appear as http://appen.pw/text.txt. That’s all Certbot wants to know here!

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I’m sorry, I forgot that you were actually using ZeroSSL. For ZeroSSL, you will need to create the files that it tells you to. It will tell you what their names and contents should be. That does require creating .well-known/acme-challenge within your webroot. However, there does not need to be any pre-existing file within that directory; ZeroSSL will tell you all the files you need to create there.

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Thanks @schoen

That’s is what I don’t know. I can create text files at webroot. But, what should be the contents ? I do not know the required file names either.

Aha, it looks like you were confused by

This could definitely be read to suggest that you already need to know what the files are. However, the intention is to help you decide whether or not ZeroSSL is right for you! That is, instead of "you need to create these files now", the sentence intends to suggest "you will need to be capable of creating such files later on during the process, when instructed to do so by this site".

When you actually begin the ZeroSSL workflow, it will subsequently tell you the files' names and contents. These can't be known or predicted in advance because they are chosen by the certificate authority (not ZeroSSL) in response to your individual certificate request. You don't need to create any files until ZeroSSL specifically tells you to do so.

@leader, maybe you could add a word or two to this sentence that makes it clearer that "you will need to" refers to something that will subsequently happen during the process, and not as an up-front prerequisite for using the tool?

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Thank you. If you don’t mind, kindly give a summary of the zerossl process. I did the " enter your domain part ". What should I do at " Verification " part ? Simply, click " Next " ?

I have never used ZeroSSL. As a Certbot developer, I always use Certbot…

If there are no more actions required for the current step in ZeroSSL, you should probably click “Next”.

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It asks for those files. Or, rather talks about it. I am not sure what’s the right action at that point.

@schoen, the text in question is actually shown on the verification step above the files :slight_smile: Specifically it says (for HTTP verification):

To verify domain ownership using HTTP verification, you will need to create appropriate files with specific text strings under your "webroot/.well-known/acme-challenge/" directory, where "webroot" is the main directory with your website pages.

I could for example change it to say:

To verify domain ownership using HTTP verification, you will need to create the files with the names and the content as shown below. The files should be created in "webroot/.well-known/acme-challenge/" directory, where "webroot" is the main directory with your website pages (often public_html or similar). If ".well-known" directory and its "acme-challenge" subdirectory do not exist, they need to be created.

To me that sounds as simple as it can get. I would imagine though that there still might be questions like "What is subdirectory?" or "How to create a directory?", but I believe it would be the case where any further explanation would require an actual support session.

@Dilip, Verification process (if you selected HTTP verification) requires, as mentioned before, having verification files placed on your server. Verification is the action you need to take. Those files can be just downloaded from that very page (as long as browser supports that, which would be the case for the most modern browsers) or created manually - the names and the content are also listed on the page. It is also outlined where to put them (see the webroot bit of text).

However, if that part still causes confusion, I would recommend getting a proper IT support or change your hosting to the one which would make it possible to run certbot (which might configure everything automatically).

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Oh, sorry for my misdiagnosis of the meaning of the text. As I said, I’ve never used ZeroSSL. Thank you for explaining this.

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No worries, I never used Certbot, so we are good :smile:

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Thanks. I know how to create files within a selected location. I could use FTP or file manager with cPanel.

From what I understand from your reply, at the Verification stage. I would need to create a directory with name " .well-known " and then a directory with name " acme-challenge " inside it. Then, there were 2 files on the page available for download. I need to keep it inside " acme-challenge " directory, right ?

Yes, that is indeed correct.

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@leader Will be great if you can give the rest of the process in 2-3 lines. I do not want to get stuck in middle and come back here. Thanks.

If you placed the files correctly, then after pressing Next you will have your certificate file (which contains both the domain certificate and the issuer’s one) and the domain key. You download them and then you add them to cPanel.

Basically the rest is the installation and configuration, which has practically nothing to do with how you obtained certificates - it will be the generally same (unless you are using something automatic, like certbot). Once again - if you have no knowledge in general how to add SSL in cPanel or configure the web-server directly, I’d recommend to at least Google or check youtube videos - there are plenty of examples, including the ones which are using the certificates obtained via ZeroSSL. For example:

http://wiki.helionet.org/Installing_an_SSL_Certificate_with_ZeroSSL

Note that they are showing an example from before the download option was added on the verification step, so in your case it’s even easier.

The key here is to be willing to try and get the knowledge first. If you try and fail, ask for help. But if you don’t even try - eventually you’ll get stuck with the process anyway or will be needing help over and over again.

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