Creating an SSL Certificate

Learn how to generate an SSL certificate, which you can use to secure your website

What is Gilect's SSL?

Whether you use our hosting or not, you can easily install a free SSL certificate on your website. These SSLs expire within three months but have unlimited renewals.

What is an SSL certificate?

An SSL (stands for Secure Socket Layer) keeps your connection with the hosting servers secure. It is what allows you to have https in your URL.

Having an SSL certificate is important as it encrypts data and keeps it from hackers. If you don’t have an SSL, many browsers won’t trust your website and display an error message if someone tries to access the “https” version of your website.

what happens when you don’t have SSL installed

What websites can I use Gilect SSL for?

You can use Gilect SSL for any domain that you own, even if you aren’t hosting it on Gilect.

You can also use Gilect SSL on subdomains, including ones offered for free by Gilect.

How long do these SSL certificates last?

Gilect’s SSLs last for three months before they expire. You can renew them as many times as you want.

Getting started: What do I need before generating the SSL certificate?

Before generating your SSL certificate, make sure that you have a CSR code. Our CPanel offers a tool allowing you to generate CSRs.

CSRs have the information that is needed to generate the SSL certificate. This information isn’t made public.

When you generate a CSR, a private key is also generated. Please keep these in a safe place, as you will need them later.

You can learn how to generate a CSR here:

Generating a CSR

How to generate the SSL certificate

Creating an SSL is easy! First, make sure you are on the Gilect Central dashboard (https://central.gilect.com). If you scroll down, you’ll notice the page is divided into two sections: hosting services and SSL certificates. For now, we only want to create a new SSL certificate, so ignore the Hosting Services and press “Add”

Then, you will be directed to a page where you have to paste your CSR code. Press “Generate” after you finish. Make sure that you include

—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–

and…

—–END CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–

Paste the CSR Code

After that, you will be directed to the homepage, where you will find the SSL has been generated. If you don’t see it right away, please note it can take 5 minutes for the SSL to be fully generated.

Press the “Manage” button and continue to the next step.

Verification

To verify you own the domain, you must create CNAME records.

The following instructions show you how to apply the SSL on Gilect Cloud’s CPanel, however, it should be similar to other control panels.

Open the CPanel and find “CNAME Records.”

CNAME record

Copy the record from the Client Area into the CPanel. On some other hosts, or Cloudflare, the record name and domain are to be put in one field.

Domain

in the CPanel, select the domain that you are installing the certificate on:

Depending on your host, this may be a bit different. Some hosts require the Record name and Domain in one field, in which the Record name would be: RECORD.yourdomain.com.

Destination

Copy the destination from the Gilect Central Client Area into the CPanel

After you are finished with these steps, press “Add”.

Installation

In the client area, you can check the status of the SSL certificate. Wait for it to be “active”. This may take up to 24 hours, due to DNS propogation.

After that, you can install the SSL certificate by pasting the certificate.

SSLs in Gilect Cloud's CPanel

Congratulations! Your website now works on SSL! For more detailed instructions on installing the SSL certificate please read:

Installing The SSL Certificate