How to Install SSL Certificate on NGINX Web Server

SSL Installation Steps for NGINX Web Server

Initial Checklist

Before Installing SSL Certificate please ensure following processes have been completed

• Buy/renew SSL Certificate
• Generate CSR with SHA-2 algorithm
• Save the CSR & Private key file on your server
• Apply for SSL Certificate Issuance
• Submit SSL issuance documents to Certificate authority (for EV & OV SSL Certificate)

Step 1: Store Certificate Files

After quick domain verification, you will receive your SSL certificate file via email in a Zip file from Certificate authority. Download that zip file and extract it on your server directory. This zip file contains server certificate, root certificate and intermediate certificate.

Step 2: Create new domain.crt & Intermediate.crt file

• Open the server certificate using any text editor
• Copy all the encrypted data starting from ‘—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE—–‘to ‘——END CERTIFICATE—–‘.
• Paste this data into a new text file and give this file name as crt. 

Following the same way create a new file for intermediate certificate and give it a name as Intermediate.crt

Step 3: Combine the Server & Intermediate certificate files.

To combine Server & intermediate certificate files use following piece of code

cat intermediate.crt >> SSL.crt

Make sure the extension of the combined file should be .pem.

Step 4: NGINX virtual host file editing

• Open the NGINX virtual-host file for the website which you wish to secure.
• Create a copy of the existing server module of virtual-host file and paste it into the original source.
• Now add following piece of code under server module

server {
listen 443;

ssl on;
ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/your_SSL.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/your_domain_name.key;

server_name your.domain.com;
access_log /var/log/nginx/nginx.vhost.access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/nginx.vhost.error.log;
location / {
root /home/www/public_html/your.domain.com/public/;
index index.html;
}
}

Note: Here is the above code ssl_certificate is the .pem file that you’ve created under step 3, ssl_certificate_key is the certificate key file you’ve received during CSR generation process. So you need to add the correct file name & path which you’ve created.

• Using sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart command to restart your NGINX server.
• Your SSL Certificate is now installed on your NGINX web server.

SSL Resources:

• NGINX Support
• Install SSL on Apache
• Install SSL on Tomcat

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