Hostgator and SSL Certificates on your Hosting Account

One of my websites is doing ecommerce transactions and I needed a new SSL certificate ordered and installed. Since the website is hosted at Hostgator I opened a ticked through the helpdesk and inquired about what they would need from me. Shortly after I had submitted the ticket I received an email with some basic instructions – including the explanation about needing a dedicated IP address. I also was offered the option to order an SSL certificate directly from Hostgator or from a 3rd party.

Since I have wholesale access to domain names and SSL Certificates I opted to buy my own. My website was already sitting on a dedicated IP address. All I had to do was click on the link that took me to a page where I would submit my CSR request for the certificate. This portion is created on the web server. With this code you can buy a matching SSL certificate. It’s like a challenge/response key that assures security. If the keys don’t match when the certificate is installed, it cannot be installed and the website visitor cannot be tricked into a presumable safe web connection.

Overall the entire process was fairly easy and streamlined. I’d say even a less experienced webmaster can easily accomplish this without asking for too much help. Hostgator apparently has looked at this process very well and worked out a way to reduce errors dramatically. The only gotcha I found was the missing information about what Web Server / SSL combination (Apache + ModeSSL) was in use. I had to update the ticket just to be safe.

So, if you need ecommerce strength web hosting that includes an SSL certificate, Hostgator should definitely be on your list of web hosts to be considered.

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