In order to process secure transactions (whether hosted with us, bought with us, or not) you will need an SSL certificate. There are 3 parts to making the SSL certificate functional. Here is the process that is involved when buying a certificate:

 

1.  You will need to generate a CSR (certificate signing request). If we are your webhost, you can do this by purchasing one of our certificates and it will be done automatically. Otherwise you'll have to contact your webhost or administrator. The CSR is basically a text file that looks like this (please see obtaining plain text certificate for more information)

 

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIB4jCCAUsCAQAwgaExCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVTMRMwEQYDVQQIEwpDYWxpZm9ybmlh MQ8wDQYDVQQHEwZGcmVzbm8xMjAwBgNVBAoTKVByb2Zlc3Npb25hbCBFeGNoYW5n ZSBTZXJ2aWNlIENvcnBvcmF0aW9uMRgwFgYDVQQDEw93d3cudXNnYmNjYy5vcmcx ... .../oCFOstRbF0iFkG8aW1VsLsMMKJYKzeV9a15 soqnHfmm -----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----

and contains the following information (which is grabbed from our contact database when the request is made):

 

• Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]

•State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]

•Locality Name (eg, city)

•Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]

•Organizational Unit Name (eg, section)

•Common Name (eg, secure URL name)

•Email Address

 

At the time the CSR is generated, an RSA PRIVATE KEY will be generated at the same time. This RSA KEY will eventually be paired up with the SIGNED CERTIFICATE to create a secure connection.

 

Once the CSR is generated, it then should be submitted to the certificate authority (We do this manually for customers who purchase certificates through us).

 

The certificate authority will then send an 'approver' email to the domain admin contact and they will have to approve the certificate to be signed.

 

Once approved, the certificate authority will send the signed certificate to us if the certificate was purchased by us.