Not able to Verifiy MyDomain

[zenstate]

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 domain is: kurocksteadyclothing.com

I ran this command: Verification Result

It produced this output: Invalid response from http://kurocksteadyclothing.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/ydZiL1vyw9UE-tm3ltHvt5ujBThlv63mJn2CWB1_3IQ:"

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-"

My web server is (include version): Web Hosting Shared

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version): Linux

My hosting provider, if applicable, is: GoDaddy

I can login to a root shell on my machine (yes or no, or I don’t know): yes

I’m using a control panel to manage my site (no, or provide the name and version of the control panel): cPanel

[_az]

Which software/tool/website did you use to try to issue the Let’s Encrypt certificate?

[zenstate]

an online tool Zerossl

[_az]

Great.

If looks like you used the HTTP validation method, where you copied a file into the .well-known/acme-challenge directory of your website. With ZeroSSL, this is the “Verification” step.

Sometimes websites interfere with access to this file due to the way their .htaccess files are setup.

You can fix this problem by adding the following to the top of the .htaccess file of your website:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^\.well-known/acme-challenge - [L]

You can confirm this is working by creating a file called test.txt within the .well-known/acme-challenge directory of your website, and then trying to access http://kurocksteadyclothing.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/text.txt in your browser.

Once you are able to access that file, try the ZeroSSL process again.

[zenstate]

Could you explain it with a little more depth? I’m not familiar with some of the steps. I have limited knowledge about coding.

[_az]

ZeroSSL, and Let’s Encrypt in general, requires you to create a file, accessible on your domain, in order to verify that you own the domain, before issuing you a certificate.

With ZeroSSL it was this step (except the domains and validation text would have been different):

When you came upon this screen, did you follow the instructions to create the validation files on your GoDaddy hosting service?

[zenstate]

Yes, I copied and pasted the 2 text files into /public_html/.well-known/acme-challenge. However after clicking on NEXT the error message read: Invalid response from http://kurocksteadyclothing.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/ydZiL1vyw9UEtm3ltHvt5ujBThlv63mJn2CWB1_3IQ:"<metacharset=“UTF-8”><meta name=“viewport” content=“width=device-width, initial-”

[_az]

Great! The probable reason for the failure is your public_html/.htaccess file, as I mentioned earlier.

1. Include those two lines I mentioned in my earlier post, at the top of the .htaccess file.
2. Create public_html/.well-known/acme-challenge/test.txt so that we can verify the change is working before you try again.

[zenstate]

So this is whats on the .htacess file now:

BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

END WordPress

I need to add to the lines previously to the top like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^.well-known/acme-challenge - [L]

BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

END WordPress

[_az]

This would be fine:

# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On 
RewriteBase / 
RewriteRule ^\.well-known/acme-challenge - [L]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d 
RewriteRule . /index.php [L] 
# END WORDPRESS

[zenstate]

Ok updated the public_html/.htaccess file and added public_html/.well-known/acme-challenge/test.txt. What is the next step?

[_az]

The test.txt file is still inaccessible - WordPress is still intercepting the URL:

http://www.kurocksteadyclothing.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/test.txt

I am not totally sure why, it will have something to do with the way your GoDaddy service is setup. It may be worth asking them for help.

Until you can avoid this, you won’t be able to issue a Let’s Encrypt certificate using the HTTP method.

You might have better luck using the DNS method in the ZeroSSL tool, as you can just modify your DNS records in GoDaddy and avoid touching the web hosting files at all.

[zenstate]

Okay I will give that a try. Thanks so much for the help. I really appreciate it.

[_az]

Just one clarification - if you do try the DNS method, you will need to modify the DNS records in Google Domains, since they are doing your DNS hosting for your domain .

[zenstate]

Okay thanks im going to look into it.