Apache and Nginx setup

Obtaining an SSL certificate

The first step to running on HTTPS is to obtain a certificate. There are cheap or free certificates available from some certificate authorities. These won’t come pre-installed on popular web browsers, making them useless for external-facing sites. If you’re running an internal application, cheap alternatives and self-signed certificates are valid options. For everyone else, purchase a certificate.

I recommend checking with your DNS provider to see if they offer discounted or easy-to-set-up certificates. For example, DNSimple provides subscription payments for certificates at a considerable discount.

If your DNS provider does not provide certificates, Symantec/VeriSign is a well-respected certificate authority.

Now, go buy one!

Walk through the setup process of your chosen certificate authority. Usually, you will upload your server certificate (yourApp.csr), and they will email you the signed certificate.

Your certificate authority will provide you with the signed certificate, which we’ll name yourAppSigned.crt. Copy this to your server. For this example, I’ll use the following path:

/usr/bin/ssl/yourAppSigned.crt