After purchasing an SSL Certificate and before it's issued by the Certificate Authority (CA), the SSL must be configured. And one of the pieces of information that you will need during the configuration process is the Certificate Signing Request (CSR). The CSR is generated on the server that will host your domain/website to which you want to install the SSL certificate. If you are using a hosting control panel like cPanel, the whole process is just swift.
This article will show you how to create or generate a certificate signing request within cPanel. But before we begin, I want to remind you that this article focuses on generating the certificate signing request within the user's cPanel account. If you are a server administrator or reseller and want to know how to generate the CSR within WHM, we have another article dedicated to that. Kindly check it out. The same applies to those who may want to create CSRs in other hosting control panels. Now let's head to the steps.
Steps to Generate The Certificate Signing Request
Below are the step-by-step guide to generating a CSR within a cPanel account:
Log in to cPanel
If you are hosting your domain/website with Jubilee Web Host, we already sent you an email with your cPanel hosting account. In addition, there are many ways you can log in to your cPanel account. Check our article here. If you are hosting with a different hosting provider and are not sure of how to access your cPanel account, simply contact them and they will be able to help you.
Navigate to the CSR Generation Page
Within your cPanel interface;
- Scroll down to the Security section.
- Click SSL/TLS
- On the resulting page, select a Default SSL/TLs Key Type. We recommend leaving this to the server default value especially if you are not sure.
- Under Certificate Signing Requests (CSR), click Generate, view, or delete SSL certificate signing requests.
Fill Out the Required Information
On the resulting page;
- Scroll down to the Generate a New Certificate Signing Request (CSR) section.
- Fill out the information as required. This may include;
- Key: Leave this to the default Generate a New Key to generate a fresh CSR/Key pair.
- Domains: A comma-separated list of domain names to be secured. If you want secure a single domain, say yourdomain.com, simply enter yourdomain.com. In most cases, this will also secure the www version of your domain. If you want to secure only a single sub-domain, say sub.yourdomain.com, then enter sub.yourdomain.com. And if you want to secure all subdomains of a single domain (wildcard), simply enter *.yourdomain.com.
- City: The full name of your business' city or locality.
- State: The full name of your business' state or province.
- Country: Your company's country of origin.
- Company: Legally registered name of your business.
- Company Division: A name for a division or group within your company.
- Email: A valid email address where you can be contacted to verify domain ownership.
- Passphrase: A phrase that may be used to verify your or the organisation's identity.
- Description: A description of your CSR to help you identify it within your cPanel. If no description is provided, the domain name you entered above will be used.
Complete the CSR Generation Process
Click the Generate button to complete the process of generating your certificate signing request. At this point, a CSR, private key and a self-signed certificate will be generated for your domain.
Keep your CSR and Key Safe
After generating the certificate signing request, a private key and a self-signed certificate, the three will be displayed on the screen for you to copy. These will also be stored on your server within your cPanel account for future use. Make sure to keep them safe because you will need them while configuring and installing your SSL certificate.
Conclusion
Congrats! You have just learned how to generate or create a certificate signing request within cPanel. We now have what we need to configure our SSL certificate. We shall also use these while installing the certificate after it has been issued by the certificate authority. Let's now proceed and learn how to configure an SSL certificate and how to install it on a cPanel account.
By the way, if you haven't ordered an SSL certificate already, you may get one here at the cheapest price on the market.
