Using Shared SSL Certificates (Windows)

Shared SSL enables you to secure connections to your website without purchasing a valid SSL certificate or generating a self-signed one. Instead, you can "share" an SSL certificate installed on a pre-defined domain belonging to your hosting provider by means of a virtual directory pointing to the httpdocs or httpsdocs folder of your website. The domain sharing its SSL certificate is called the master SSL domain. The name of the master SSL domain is displayed in the screen's title. For example, if the screen is titled Secure Your Site with an SSL Certificate Shared by the Site example.com, example.com is the name of the master SSL domain.

Note: For shared SSL to be available, your hosting provider has to enable it first.

Securing Domains with Shared SSL

To secure your domain with shared SSL, go to Websites & Domains > Shared SSL, select the Switch on shared SSL checkbox, then type in the name of the virtual directory that will be created for the master SSL domain and select either httpdocs or httpsdocs from the menu to specify to which of the website's folders the virtual directory will be pointing. You can also select the Make this website accessible only through secure connections checkbox to make the website inaccessible via the HTTP protocol. When you have finished, click OK.

After enabling shared SSL for a domain, you need to construct a special URL to access it via the HTTPS protocol. The URL should look like this:

https://<master SSL domain name>/<your virtual directory name>

For example, if the master SSL domain name is example.com, and your virtual directory name is mywebsite, the resulting URL will look like this:

https://example.com/mywebsite