Shared hosting (A2H)

I have seen on the A2Hosting site some indication that you/they are not working WELL together at this point. Their support team is below average, so I’m hoping someone here might suggest a “workaround.” Obviously, you get inquiries from VERY tech-savvy people & others much less so. With “shared hosting,” I’m probably in the bottom half, so please go light on "jargon,"if possible.

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:blackleopardredwolf.com

My web server is (include version): Sorry, do not know … but A2Hosting is on your list and you’re on theirs as working with one another.

The operating system my web server runs on is (include version):don’t know

My hosting provider, if applicable, is:A2Hosting

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

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

The version of my client is (e.g. output of certbot --version or certbot-auto --version if you’re using Certbot):idk

Can you comment on what issue you are experiencing? Do you have some error messages or screenshots?

A2 and Let’s Encrypt don’t talk directly to each other, A2 just use their service.

We can help you figure out any problems, if you can provide some details about what you’ve tried and what went wrong.

Thanks for the quick reply. A2Hosting says that theirs is (meant to be) a system whereby everything happens automatically. However, the key screen accessed from cPanel says something like “Auto Update failed.” … This is as simple as it’s raining and I have no umbrella. I’d LOVE to swap things like “NOT SECURE” currently showing up if I type www.blackleopardredwolf.com … and WARNING etc. if I type https://blackleopardredwolf.com … for the opposites, which clearly is what SSL and Let’s Encrypt are all about. I’m willing to go through a manual process, but I’m not at all sure that is technically feasible with this host AND with my “shared hosting.”

OK. Let's break it down piece by piece.

This might be a cPanel bug that appeared just yesterday. It is very probable that you don't need to worry about it.

You actually already have an SSL certificate that expires on December 24.

So as long as that issue disappears before then (and I'm betting it'll resolve on its own once A2's cPanel servers update), you don't need to do anything.

"NOT SECURE" in your browser means that you are accessing your domain insecurely.

It does not mean that there's a problem with your certificate.

You may wish to automatically setup a redirect from the insecure to the secure version of your site. You can read about doing that here: Force HTTPS Redirection | cPanel Blog

I don't see any warning when I visit that link. I see a working Let's Encrypt certificate.

Maybe try closing your browser tabs and opening them again?

2 Likes

YOU ARE unbelievably amazing. THANK YOU!

The only loose end at this point is/are my “addon domains.” This seems to be very common and very helpful to me - the ability to essentially piggy-back a handful of “parked” domain names on a functioning website.

One of those - in/on this A2hosting.com account - is AskDrRuth.com

Here, I can see NO WAY - as of now - to get that coveted “lock” to show up.

Darn - one another glitch… You gave me a neat link to some material about “redirects” using cPanel. I guess different hosts can “customize” things, and that column referenced in that post … does not exist with my host.

I’m thinking that one can accomplish the goal via .htaccess, … but I’m not all that sure … and I’ve read a variety of “solutions” online. If you can point me to the one you think best, I’ll be grateful!

It already has a certificate - https://askdrruth.com/ . Maybe this wasn't working when you posted, but it is now.

From what I've seen so far, A2's AutoSSL feature has been working perfectly for you.

That's okay - the cPanel "Force HTTPS Redirection" function just uses .htaccess under the hood anyway!

You can use this to redirect any domain to HTTPS (so it'll cover all parked/alias domains pointing to that directory):

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}
2 Likes

I just want to say how ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL this forum … and the person who helped me are!

All problems resolved, … and I wish that both Let’s Encrypt and A2Hosting could “take a bow.” The former seems to have dealt with a nasty side-effect of the probably necessary change in “the internet” to emphasize using it securely - the side-effect where millions of small websites were “red lined” in the process … and could only escape that by paying an unreasonably large sum.

And A2Hosting for “getting it together” to serve its users. I gather that it’s far from alone, but I had used 2 other hosts previously, and they apparently couldn’t be troubled to implement this elegant solution!

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.