How to Install a GoDaddy SSL Certificate on a cPanel Server

In order to handle sensitive data such as credit card numbers on your website, you need to install an SSL certificate. This will ensure that all the data exchanged between your visitors’ web browser and the web server is encrypted.

While this tutorial will show you how to install an SSL certificate on a sub-domain, the same procedure can be used for a domain. The sub-domain I will be using is “whmcs.webhostingshed.com”.

1. Assigning a Dedicated IP Address

In order to install an SSL certificate, the domain (or the sub-domain) always needs to have its own dedicated IP address. Unless you have a root access to the server, you will need to ask your hosting provider to do this for you.

a) Assigning a Dedicated IP Address to a Domain

To assign an IP address to a domain, go to WHM > Change a Site’s IP Address, select the domain from the list and click on Change. On the next page, you will be presented with a list of available IP addresses to choose from.

b) Assigning a Dedicated IP Address to a Sub-Domain

However, if you’re using a sub-domain the procedure is little bit different. After you’ve assigned the IP address, you need to add an “A record” to the sub-domain’s DNS zone file. Go to cPanel > Advanced DNS Zone Editor and add the sub-domain and the dedicated IP address:

* Important: The subdomain must always end with “.” (whmcs.webhostingshed.com.)

If everything went well, the subdomain should now respond to a different IP address than the main domain:

2. Generating a Certificate Signing Request

Before you can install an SSL certificate, you need to generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR). To do so, go to cPanel > SSL/TLS Manager > Generate, view, or delete SSL certificate signing requests.

Enter the sub-domain as well as all the information regarding your company and click Generate:

Copy the generated CSR to your favorite text editor:

3. Configuring Your SSL Certificate From Go Daddy

Log in to your Go Daddy account and click on Launch next to your SSL certificate:

On the next page, select Third Party, Dedicated Server, or Virtual Dedicated Server and copy your CSR in the box. Check the agreement box at the bottom then hit Next:

To have the request approved by the domain owner, select Domain Authorization Email and click on Next:

Confirm the operation by clicking the Next button on the next page. If everything went well, the domain owner should receive an approval request by email with a link to proceed:

Click the link from the email and approve the request:

Once the certificate is approved, you will be brought to the Secure Certificate Services control panel. Click the Download button to download the certificate to your desktop:

Select cPanel from the drop down list and click on Download:

Extract the two (2) .CRT files from the zip archive you just downloaded.

4. Uploading the SSL Certificates

To upload the SSL certificates to your cPanel account, simply go to cPanel > SSL/TLS Manager > Generate, view, upload, or delete SSL certificates and upload the two .CRT files (you can upload only one file at a time):

5. Installing the SSL Certificates

To perform this operation, you will need to have root access to the server. If you don’t, contact your server administrator or web hosting provider to have this part done for you.

To install the SSL certificates on the desired domain, go to WHM > Install an SSL certificate on a domain and click on Browse Certificates.  Select the domain’s owner account from the list. You should now see the two (2) certificates you just uploaded through cPanel:

Install both certificates by selecting them and clicking on Use Certificate. You will be able to install only one certificate at a time. Once the certificates have been installed, you should get a confirmation message like this:

If you go to WHM > Manage SSL Hosts, you should now see the domain (or sub-domain) listed:

6. Forcing a Secure Connexion

If you access your website using “https://”, your connexion will be secured. However, this does not prevent visitors from accessing your website on a non-secure connexion (http://).

To redirect visitors to the secure portion of your website, upload a file named “.htaccess” at the root of your domain’s public directory with the following content:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
</IfModule>

This will automatically send visitors to the secure area of your website, no matter what URL has been requested.