AlphaSSL Wildcard Installation into Nginx SHA-256 (September 29, 2014)

How To Install AlphaSSL Wildcard for NGINX web server

I just bought one of the cheapest Wildcard SSL ever from SS2Buy.com. The certificate was issued by AlphaSSL. I have never installed a certificate from AlphaSSL and most of their instructions are for Apache, but I am using Nginx.

Surprisingly the process of installing my AlphaSSL Wildcard certificate was very easy.

Here are the instructions:

1. Locate your AlphaSSL Wildcard certificate you received via e-mail from AlphaSSL:

2. Locate the AlphaSSL Intermediate Certificate (choose after 3/2014 SHA-256) (should be the default):

Go to:  https://www.alphassl.com/support/install-root-certificate.html

3. Combine your Wildcard Certificate + Intermediate Certificate into one file:

Create a new 'text file' name it:

whatever_your_domain-alphassl-wildcard-YYYYMMDD.crt

in your favorite text-editor. Copy and paste AlphaSSL Wildcard Certificate from Step 1 first, then paste the Immediate Certificate from Step 2.  It should look like this:

Your Wildcard Certificate on TOP and the Intermediate at the BOTTOM.

Copy this file 'whatever_your_domain-alphassl-wildcard-YYYYMMDD.crt' and your certificate key file into your private SSL directory.  I am using Ubuntu Server and it is located in /etc/nginx/ssl.

4. Change you Nginx virtual host configuration:

ssl on;

ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/whatever_your_domain-alphassl-wildcard-YYYYMMDD.crt;

ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/whatever_your_domain-alphassl-wildcard.key;

5. Restart NGINX web server:

service nginx restart

 * Stopping Nginx Server...                                                                                                                           [ OK ]

 * Starting Nginx Server...                                                                                                                           [ OK ]

6.  TEST!

When successful you should see something like this (when clicking on the pad lock icon):