How to manually install an SSL certificate on my Apache Server Ubuntu ?

Article by: Manish Methani

Last Updated: October 1, 2021 at 8:04am IST
1 min 27 sec

After your certificate request is approved, you can download your certificate from the SSL manager of your hosting provider.  Finally install it on your Apache server.

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To install it, you have to follow the following steps:

1) Upload the intermediate certificate (gd_bundle.crt or similar) and primary certificate(.crt file with randomized name) into your server folder. 

2) Find your Apache configuration file.
     On default configurations, you can find a file named 000-default.conf in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled folder.

3) Open this file with your favorite text editor.

       sudo nano 000-default.conf 

4) Inside your 000-default.conf file, find the block.

5) To make your connection secure to HTTPS, add this below the existing block

    DocumentRoot /var/www/coolexample
        ServerName coolexample.com www.coolexample.com
        SSLEngine on
        SSLCertificateFile /path/to/coolexample.crt
        SSLCertificateKeyFile /path/to/privatekey.key
        SSLCertificateChainFile /path/to/intermediate.crt
 
6) Make sure port 443 is there at the end of your server IP.

The remaining /path/to/.... file locations can be replaced with your certificates folder and file names.

7) Now, run the following command to check your Apache configuration file for error:

     apache2ctl configtest

8) If it returns a Syntax Ok response, run the following command to restart Apache server:

sudo service apache2 restart