HTTPS For Free
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This post has been migrated from my old blog. It may have broken links, or missing content.
I thought I’d take a bit of time today to secure my website for both readers and myself. HTTPS certificates have a reputation for being somewhat expensive, and complicated. Complicated doesn’t bother me, but expensive does — this site is incredibly cheap to run and I’d rather not hike up the costs for something that has relatively low traffic.
I came across a post today via Twitter that seems like a good solution: “Switch To HTTPS Now, For Free”. It seems as though a company called StartSSL offers free SSL certificates, and even has a guide to setting them up. I found their guide to be pretty self-explanatory: you have to verify your email, your domain, and then you proceed with creating your SSL certificate.
The article linked above does a better job of explaining this process than I am, and there’s no need for me to repeat it. Follow the article (I like the command-line DIY version) and you’ll be there in minutes.
I did run into one problem; namely, an error resembling
PEM_read_bio:bad end line. There’s a solution for this. If you follow the
article and cat your certificates together, there’s a good chance that the
first two will concatenate with the BEGIN and END blocks on a single line.
-----END CERTIFICATE----------BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----The solution is simple: count five hyphens in from END CERTIFICATE and
separate them:
-----END CERTIFICATE----------BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----Otherwise, the guide is great. This site is now running HTTPS, and everyone is all the better for it.