Please fill out the fields below so we can help you better. Note: you must provide your domain name to get help. Domain names for issued certificates are all made public in Certificate Transparency logs (e.g. https://crt.sh/?q=example.com), so withholding your domain name here does not increase secrecy, but only makes it harder for us to provide help.
My web server is (include version):
|Apache Version|2.4.29|
|PHP Version|5.6.34|
The operating system my web server runs on is (include version):
Linux
My hosting provider, if applicable, is:
webhostingbuzz
I can login to a root shell on my machine (yes or no, or I don’t know):
I can access via FTP if that is what you mean.
I’m using a control panel to manage my site (no, or provide the name and version of the control panel):
I have use of the CP
68.0 (build 30)
Hi,
My apologies if I have posted in the wrong area.
I just read an article on BleepingComputers and I am interested in a free certificate. I know my host, Webhostingbuzz, charges annually for such a certificate. As the internet is being pushed into using certificate I see no reason why I am being charged for a soon to be mandatory item when it should be part of my hosting package.
So, as an absolute beginner and with the possibility that my hoster will not help me one bit with certificates, is there a plain & simple idiot’s guide to getting a certificate that will work? I also have a couple of other sites with them.
Your domain already has a Let's Encrypt SSL certificate issued and installed, renewed as recently as 10 days ago, and as far back as the end of 2016.
So, are you talking about a different domain, or has somebody else perhaps been managing this process for you? Perhaps your host has AutoSSL enabled?
cPanel comes with a feature called "AutoSSL", enabled by default, that issues free certificates to all customer domains.
You may find that signing up with a different web host is one way to solve this problem, if your current host disables it for $$ reasons.
Unfortunately, since you use cPanel, it is extremely difficult to setup Let's Encrypt in a convenient/automatic manner if the host has disabled AutoSSL.
I was not aware of the certificate. Somebody had been looking at the possibility way back but I lost contact. I spotted this on the Cpanel:
Expires on June 3, 2018. The certificate will renew via AutoSSL.
So, I just leave this alone and it runs merrily on its own?
I have another site recently set up - beerfromthewood.com - I checked this on the Cpanel and found:
Expires on June 3, 2018. The certificate will renew via AutoSSL.
I had no idea about this so maybe the guy did it as well.
Anyway, both sites look to be certified and appear to auto renew.
Last question please.
I should set both my sites to be seen as "https://www...............", righ?
And this is done via the .htaccess file?
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
This is the best possible news. It means your host hasn't disabled AutoSSL, which means you never need to worry about the certificates for any of your sites.
Sure, you can do that. Maybe use [R=302] instead of 301 to begin with, since 301 will be cached by browsers (it is called a "Permanent Redirect", after all) and is difficult to roll back if you run into problems. You can change it to 301 once you are more confident that everything is working.
Add the new lines to the top of the existing file, so the HTTPS redirect applies before any of the other rules.
RewriteEngine on
# HTTPS Redirect
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=302]
# Then the rest of the file
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://beerfromthewood.com/.$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://beerfromthewood.com$ [NC]
...