Installing an SSL certificate on your website hosted with FranTech is a pretty straightforward process, but it can be a bit confusing on your first run. Here I’ll walk you through the steps for getting your certificate installed.
You’re going to hit some errors if you just try to issue a certificate via Let’s Encrypt™ SSL if you haven’t done some configuration first — so let’s get to that configuring now.
What you will need:
- FranTech should have sent you an email after your hosting account was set up containing information about your account. Go open that email in a different tab in your browser because we will need to reference it shortly.
- Access to your account where you registered your domain name. In this example, I’ll be showing you Namecheap.com.
- Go to your domain registration site and login to your account (again, I’ll be showing Namecheap.com for this example).
Select the domain and click “Manage” or your site’s equivalent to change the settings for that domain name.
Look for the “Nameservers” category to edit:
Select “Custom DNS” or your site’s equivalent:
Head to your email that FranTech sent you and look for the “Whitelabel & Vanity Nameservers” header where the namerservers are listed
Add each one of these nameservers to the nameserver list on your domain name page:
Be sure you save this before you leave the page. For Namecheap, you do this by clicking the green checkmark above your nameserver list.
Once you’ve done the above, move on to Step 2:
2. Head to FranTech’s website and log in to your account. After logging in, select “Services” and then “My Services” from the drop-down menu at the top.
You should see your domain name(s) listed and a red padlock with an “x” if you don’t have SSL installed:
Click on the listing to enter the Product Details page for that domain and then click on “Login to cPanel” on the left menu.
In cPanel, find the “Let’s Encrypt™ SSL” icon under the “Security” category (or type “SSL” into the search box at the top of the page and find it that way) and then click on it.
Under the “Issue a new certificate” section, click the “Issue” button on the right:
Check over the settings here and when they are set, click the “Issue (Dry Run)” button at the bottom:
If all went well, you should see the success notification:
Click the “Go Back” button at the bottom, click the “Issue” button again, confirm your settings again, and then click “Issue” at the bottom. Since the dry run succeeded, your final run should as well. Be aware that it may take a few seconds for it to finish:
After a few minutes, head back to the “My Products & Services” page on FranTech and confirm that your site is now registering the SSL installation with the green padlock icon (if it’s not showing after a few minutes, back out of the page and selected “My Products & Services” again):
3. Ensure the HTTPS redirect is working
Note: If you plan on installing WordPress on your site, do that first before the steps below in case your .htaccess file gets overwritten during the WordPress installation.
Open a web browser, enter your domain name and prefix it with http (e.g., http://yourdomainnamehere.com).
If HTTP is automatically changed to HTTPS when your site loads in the browser, then you are all set. If it is not, then you need to enable the redirect, as you want all users to automatically head to HTTPS instead of HTTP.
In your FranTech portal, head to cPanel again and click on “File Manager” under the “Files” section (it’s usually right at the top):
While in the File Manager, click the “Settings” button at the top, check the “Show Hidden Files (dotfiles)” checkbox in the dialog window, and then click “Save”:
On the left panel, click “public_html” to view its contents in the main window:
If the “.htaccess” file does not exist:
- Click the “+ File” button at the top of the screen to create it. Name the file “.htaccess” (without the quotes) and click “Create New File.” Be sure this file is located within the “public_html” directory
Right-click on the “.htaccess” file and select “Edit.”
Add the following lines to the file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}If the .htaccess file already exists and contains other code, put the code listed above outside of any existing functions — as seen here:
Note: If you are not using cPanel, check out this article to find what will work for you.
Click the “Save Changes” button above the editor.
Now open a web browser again and type in your domain prefixed by HTTP like you did above. If everything worked correctly, you should now see your website automatically redirect to HTTPS.
Final Note: Per Namecheap:
Your SSL installation is now complete so feel free to take the rest of the day off.
The author has no affiliation with any companies or services mentioned in this article. All logos/trademarks are the properties of their respective owners, listed below:
