Request Replacement Certificate

Hi, I know next to nothing about what I'm requesting, so please be patient! My hosting provider is HostMonster, so they are no help. I received an email from the cpanel on my websites that the Auto SSL could not renew. The error message says I need to request a replacement certificate from Let's Encrypt. My main site is https://www.lalaslalaland.com. The site that appears to need the certificate is https://www.daveforward4.com. I have not run any commands. I'm running macOS Catalina version 10.15.7, Chrome. Can you please help walk me through what I need to do. I have 10 days before it expires. Thank you!

I am guessing that the problem is that www.daveforward4.com doesn't currently point to your HostMonster hosting.

What follows is that HostMonster isn't able to renew the SSL certificate. This is expected: to issue or renew an SSL certificate, your host needs to actually be hosting your domain.

Where www.daveforward4.com currently points is to a MailChimp website:

www.daveforward4.com.   14400   IN      CNAME   us9-5af373d5-e6bd50a4146f886d4628e47dc.pages.mailchi.mp.

Do you recognize that MailChimp domain, or do you know perhaps who set it up?

if you're trying to host the website with MailChimp, the people to talk to are probably MailChimp themselves. HostMonster won't be able to help you with that.

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WOW az, thanks! Haha! Darn MailChimp! when I first set up the website we wanted to have the capability of creating a mailing list... MailChimp proved to be too cumbersome for what we needed. But in the initial setup they gave instructions to make some changes to redirect the SSL. I'm not using Mailchimp, and have deleted the plugin, but I forgot about the changes I made. WOW, thank you so much for finding the problem! I do not want MailChimp to host. I'd like to remove whatever I did to indicate that. But I don't know how. Is that something you can tell me how to do?
Linda

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It depends what you did to begin with! I'm not sure.

If I had to guess, I think you need to:

  1. Go into cPanel, go to "DNS" or "Zone Editor",
  2. You should find a "CNAME" record for www.daveforward4.com that points to us9-5af373d5-e6bd50a4146f886d4628e47dc.pages.mailchi.mp.
  3. Delete it
  4. Add an "A" record for www.daveforward4.com that points to 67.20.76.247

If that sounds like too much, or the instructions don't apply, you could probably just ask HostMonster support to "please fix www.daveforward4.com so that it points to my HostMonster hosting".

Once that is fixed, give it a day or two, and the SSL certificate should renew on its own.

2 Likes

Awesome! I will try the first, and if that doesn't work I will enlist Host Monster support. You're amazing. First the response was lightning fast, and second (maybe more importantly) you were clear and concise! Bravo!

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I’m still getting the email notifications that there’s an error. This is a campaign website that I probably won’t need after Nov 3rd, so I’m gonna just let whatever happens happen... hopefully nothing too catastrophic! I just wanted to follow up with this thread to say I did what was suggested, (didn’t open a ticket w/HostMonster though) and waited a few days. This wasn’t the solution, or not enough of a solution.

Well... there's now no A (or CNAME) record at all for www.daveforward4.com, so it's not reachable:

There should be a CNAME record that looks something like:
www.daveforward4.com. 14399 IN CNAME daveforward4.com.


This SPF record (related to anti-spoofing for email) looks suspect to me:

Removing this record might be advisable.

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