How to Activate and Get Your PositiveSSL Certificate on Namecheap for Your Website
If you’re looking to add SSL — in simple terms, getting that nice lock icon in visitors’ browsers and having your URL start with https — to your website, then Comodo PositiveSSL is one of the leading solutions on the market.
For one year, it goes for $8.88; this yearly rate progressively gets cheaper with every year that you pay for up front all the way down to $5.88/year if you commit to four years.
In this article, I’ll go over the process once you pay for the PositiveSSL certificate and check out; I recently did it for my personal website, https://tremaineeto.com, so it’s pretty fresh in my mind.
Find it in your Account
First, log into your Namecheap account and then go to Product List and then click SSL Certificates.
At this point, you’ll want to hit ACTIVATE.
You’ll be met with this first step; for more information, I think it’s a solid idea to click on the orange link that says “What is CSR and how to create one”.
Essentially, though, I suggest that you use this CSR Generator that the article mentions.
Once you get your CSR through the link, copy and paste the CSR text into the above form. The primary domain should automatically fill in with your domain name if you filled in the CSR Generator correctly. Then, hit Next.
You’ll see your domain in the top part, and then you’ll have to confirm what kind of server you’re using. In my case, I know that I’m not using Windows IIS or Java Tomcat, so I leave Any Other server (cPanel, Apache, NGINX, etc.) selected. Then, click Next. You’ll see this:
You now have two possibilities, which I will cover in the next two sections. As you read on, ask yourself the question in the heading.
Do you have this approver email set up on your website?
No, I don’t
So maybe you’re not sure what I’m talking about, or maybe you already know you don’t have it set up. If you don’t know what an approver email is, it means the email that Namecheap will send a confirmation email to, and as it works, you can’t just put any email in there; rather, you have to send it to specific emails on your domain so that they know it’s you and tied to it.
To set one up, let’s go back to our Namecheap account and then click on Domain List in the left-hand toolbar.
Scroll down to the section that says REDIRECT EMAIL.
Here, click the red plus and link that says ADD FORWARDER.
For the Alias section, type in admin and then forward it to an email you already have set up. This can be your own personal email, for instance. Then, click on the green checkmark.
Now, sadly, we have to wait. Why? According to Namecheap’s help article on email forwarding,
“Please allow about an hour for newly created mailboxes to be completely set up on the forwarding mail server. After your settings have been activated, you will be able to test your mail service.”
Go do something else to relax. After about an hour, test it out by trying to send an email to admin@yourdomain.com to see if it forwards to the personal email you set up. If it does, then go back to your Namecheap SSL setup and click Next.
Then, go to the next section: “Yes, I do”.
Yes, I do
Whether you already had your approver email set up or just set it up, you’re now ready to move on with step 4 out of 5. Here, you can actually specify which email exactly you want the SSL file sent to.
Hit Next, and then you should then get the SSL file sent to the admin e-mail address by Sectigo Certification Authority.
Follow the e-mail instructions by copying and pasting the Domain Control Validation Code in the external site (make sure it’s the right one: https://secure.trust-provider.com/), and you will eventually get the following message:
Then, wait for your PositiveSSL Certificate to come in your e-mail. Inside, you’ll find:
- Your PositiveSSL Certificate (a
.crtfile) - Your Apache “bundle” file (a
.ca-bundlefile)
These should be in a .zip file attached to the e-mail.
And that’s it! You now have the CSR from the CSR Generator, a PositiveSSL certificate, and a CA bundle file, which is what you will need to provide to your server in order to set up SSL and thus HTTPS for your website.
In a future article, I can go over how to do that for different servers, but for now I suggest you look into your server’s documentation as it’s slightly different for each one.
