Overview

This post only covers how to obtain a Professionally-Signed SSL certificate using your GreggHost control panel. This certificate, which is signed by Sectigo and displays a certificate seal of confidence on your site, costs $15 per year.

Sectigo is listed as the certificate authority on any Comodo certificate issued after January 2019, while Comodo is listed on any certificate issued before that date. Both names are used to refer to the same business.

This certificate is suggested for eCommerce sites, customer login pages, and any other site that sends sensitive data.

Before you begin

Make sure you’ve set up a confirmation email address on your domain before you start the SSL certificate buying procedure. This email may be required to complete the transaction.

This email address must be one that is associated with your domain. If your website’s address is example.com, for example, make sure you’ve already generated one of the following addresses:

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
Instructions on how to create an email account can be found in the following article:

How can I add an email address to my account?
Your email can be hosted by another firm; all you need to do is make sure one of the addresses shown above is operational and receiving email.

CAA records

A website owner can use CAA records to indicate which Certificate Authorities (CAs) are allowed to issue SSL certificates for their domain.

If you want to add CAA records to your domain before acquiring an SSL certificate, read the following article.

CAA policy documents

Purchasing a Signed Certificate in the DreamHost panel

Go to the Secure Certificates section of the website.
SSL certificate BUTTON TO ADD
Click the Add button to the right of your domain.
Sectigo SSL certificate (paid)
Click the Select this Certificate button after selecting the option to add a $15 Sectigo certificate.
Sectigo SSL certificate (paid)
Fill in your contact and website information.
In order to progress to the next phase, you must fill in ALL of the fields (including the ‘Organization name’). Enter your first and last name if you don’t have an organization name. If your address does not include any of these information (such as an apt. #), you can leave ‘Street 2’ and ‘Street 3’ blank.
This information is used to create the Certificate Signing Request (CSR), which is used to create your new SSL certificate that has been professionally signed.
When you’re finished, click the Next Step button.
Sectigo SSL certificate (paid)
On the next page, click the Proceed to Next Step button after selecting one of your domain’s email addresses from the dropdown list.
Address for confirmation

This must be a domain-based email address. Ascertain that one of the emails provided in that dropdown has been setup on your domain and is capable of receiving mail. If it does not already exist, create it before proceeding.

Please keep in mind that utilizing email to validate your domain is a last resort. This means you might never get a confirmation email, but the SSL will still work. However, if the other DCV procedures fail to verify, you may receive an email. As a result, configuring this email address is still necessary. For more information, see the following article:

What exactly is the DCV procedure?
Choose your payment method on the last page. You have the choice of paying with a credit card or an electronic check.
Button to order a certificate
Click the Place Certificate Order button when you’re finished.

What happens after you purchase it?

An email from [email protected] will be sent to the Domain Control Validation (DCV) address you specified for this order shortly. This is simply a confirmation of your purchase, but it may also require you to verify your contact information by clicking a link.

Email from Sectigo
Sectigo may also send you a follow-up email. This is part of the DCV verification procedure for your domain. Because this is the final step in the DCV process, it’s conceivable you won’t get this email. If you receive this email from Sectigo, follow the instructions to finish the domain verification process.

Most orders are completed and installed within 2 hours of approval, but it may take up to 24 hours to complete.

Installing the Sectigo certificate on your website

You have merely acquired the Sectigo certificate at this time. It has not yet been installed. It’s listed as ‘Order Processing’ on the Secure Certificates page.

When you click the right-hand Settings button, you’ll see that a ‘Temporary’ certificate is currently installed, which you can see under the Current Certificate tab:

Temporary certificates are valid only while your Sectigo certificate is being installed. Your Sectigo certificate takes its place and becomes the sole active certificate on your domain once it is installed.

When the Sectigo certificate is active, the following appears to the right of the domain on the Secure Certificates page.

Test if the SSL certificate is working

Your domain’s certificate has now been deployed. Visit your website’s secure URL at:

https://example.com
Install Comodo Cert 08.png
The browser bar displays a lock icon, indicating that the connection is secure.

You may need to wait a few hours for the certificate to update online if you just installed it.

Forcing your site to load HTTPS by default
Visitors will not be able to utilize your SSL certificate until they manually type https before your domain name, even after you have added it to your site. Because the certificate is supposed to safeguard all of your website traffic, this defeats the point of adding it in the first place.

There are various options for resolving this issue. Instructions on how to construct a configuration file to redirect all visitor traffic to the secure version of your URL may be found in the following article (https).

Troubleshooting

When you visit the HTTPS version of your URL after installing your certificate, your browser may still display an insecure warning. This could happen for a variety of reasons. Instructions on how to fix this problem can be found in the following article.

Resolving alerts about insecure sites and mixed material