I give up (More Title Length)

[MJLogan]

I give up.
I’m actually fairly smart, but with my host and the time I have available, this is impossible.

And let me say, I am not here complaining. In fact, kudos to the LE people who worked hard to make this happen. It’s just that without changing hosts (away from Bluehost where, until now, I’ve been content) I can’t make this work. I failed and it’s not very often I fail.

After exploring lets encrypt and coming here a number of times, I decided to wet my feet and give it a try. I set aside an entire Saturday in June to do this. I’m not an expert on Linux or Putty. A long time ago I used Unix quite well. Seems the same. Mostly.

This post is a warning to anyone who wants to use Let’s Encrypt on a host that doesn’t support it. If you’re not an expert, or even a good amateur, maybe this isn’t for you. I’m left to wonder if I should change hosts, or just give up entirely. It seems to me that as hard as this community has worked, the process is still overly complex.

An entire Saturday spent on this and I finally got Certbot to ask for and receive a certificate for a domain I had not yet deployed as a website. When I started receiving emails saying my certificate was going to expire, I made a few attempts to renew it, but can’t find certbot. My certificate expires tomorrow. And I’m just not worried about it right now. Hopefully when I set up this domain in about a week with a new website (Joomla) I won’t run into any issues.

Everything you read on this website makes it look easy. Here’s a few steps. Just do these and…
you will fail
Right. I failed. I (almost) never fail, but I’ve given up, at least for now. Maybe I’ll switch hosts. I’ve been looking at Rochen, but that’s shared and I’m using VPS. Had too many problems with shared in the past. Not sure I’ll do it again, but they assure me I’ll be happy. How many times have I heard that before?

If it sounds like I’m ranting, I don’t mean to. I just like to type. Writing is what I do.
To the newbies out there about to try this and don’t know a Bash from a Cron, let me give you this advice. Take notes. Set aside plenty of time. Perhaps consider using a host that will handle it automatically. Just don’t be fooled by the easy-looking process. It’s not easy and once you get into it, you’ll find hours spent with little progress.

I’m sure I’ll be back, but for now, I give up. I failed.

~MJ
Wish I could go back to MS-DOS 3.1 and beat my head on Borland’s Turbo Assembler.
(that might tell you a little about my background)

[motoko]

Yeah. The biggest issue is that if you’re on shared hosting and the hosting company doesn’t support LE in their control panel, it’s going to be difficult. It, unfortunately, is the nature of not having control over the server.

If you’re on a VPS, as you say, then it shouldn’t be too difficult to get you set up. Any server you have enough control over to manage the raw configuration should work in some manner.

[MJLogan]

Unfortunately, there is no “Do it this way” for a VPS at Bluehost.
Unless you already know what you’re doing, it’s a long tangled mess.
Nothing is where you expect to find it. I’m sure someone who knows their
way around a server better than I do could get it to work. I have
neither the time or any further impetus to try.

MJ

[motoko]

The problem is that every server is unique. There is likely no single “VPS at Bluehost” setup either, as the way I may manage it will be different than the way you do. Looking at their site, though, it looks like they install cPanel standard. In that case, cPanel has a plugin that works with their AutoSSL feature.

Either way, I hope things will work out.