How to obtain a dedicated SSL certificate
Each hosting account comes with access to a shared SSL certificate, as standard. However, a shared certificate may not be suitable for certain e-commerce applications.
If you require a dedicated SSL certificate, please contact us and request it. Please check the webhosting page for current pricing. The price includes installation, and a dedicated IP address.
If you order a dedicated certificate:
- your site will have a dedicated IP address
- your certificate will contain your domainname
- there will be no interruption to service when the certificate is installed
- it will take approximately 24 hours to install
Note: installing a dedicated certificate does not automatically secure every file on your site. What it does is give you the ability to protect every file on the site. It's unlikely you'll want to do this, however, as the encryption is relatively slow and there's little point in encrypting every image, for example, that is sent, including your logo, menu buttons etc. In real-world use, SSL is used to protect specific pages of your site (such as your payment page). As with shared SSL, you'll need a web developer to configure your site to make use of the dedicated SSL certificate, once it is installed.
You can check whether the certificate is active by attempting to access your domain using SSL - enter https://www.yourdomain.com/ into your browser. If you see a certificate error, with the explanation that the server's certificate name does not match the server's hostname, then your certificate is not yet active. When it becomes active, you will see no error. If you examine the server certificate, you should see your own domainname listed in the Issued To field. If you see any other domainname listed in the Issued To field, or if there is no certificate available to examine, then your certificate is not yet active.
Note: you cannot migrate your certificate to a new hosting provider.
Note: you will need to provide a contact name and address, which will be embedded in the certificate, and can only be changed when the certificate expires (eg. once a year). In addition, this information will be viewable by the public. Ensure to select the contact name and address carefully.
