Let’s Encrypt (Free https)
Note:
Certbot is meant to be run on the server where your website is hosted. If you don’t have administrative shell access to your webserver or you’re not familiar with command line server administration, you should check if your hosting provider has built-in Let’s Encrypt support by contacting them or checking this list of supporting providers.
Install
On Ubuntu systems, the Certbot team maintains a PPA. Once you add it to your list of repositories all you’ll need to do is apt-get the following packages.
Certbot’s DNS plugins are also available for your system which can be used to automate obtaining a wildcard certificate from Let’s Encrypt’s ACMEv2 server. To use one of these plugins, you must have configured DNS for the domain you want to obtain a certificate for with a DNS provider that Certbot has a plugin for. A list of these plugins and more information about using them can be found here. To install one of these plugins, run the installation command above but replace python-certbot-nginx with the name of the DNS plugin you want to install.
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
$ sudo apt-get update
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$ sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx
Get Started
Certbot has an Nginx plugin, which is supported on many platforms, and certificate installation.
Running this command will get a certificate for you and have Certbot edit your Nginx configuration automatically to serve it. If you’re feeling more conservative and would like to make the changes to your Nginx configuration by hand, you can use the certonlysubcommand:
$ sudo certbot --nginx
Running this command will get a certificate for you and have Certbot edit your Nginx configuration automatically to serve it. If you’re feeling more conservative and would like to make the changes to your Nginx configuration by hand, you can use the certonly subcommand:
$ sudo certbot --nginx certonly
If you want to obtain a wildcard certificate using Let’s Encrypt’s new ACMEv2 server, you’ll also need to use one of Certbot’s DNS plugins. To do this, make sure the plugin for your DNS provider is installed using the instructions above and run a command like the following:
$ sudo certbot -a dns-plugin -i nginx -d "*.example.com" -d example.com --server https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
Automating renewal
The Certbot packages on your system come with a cron job that will renew your certificates automatically before they expire. Since Let’s Encrypt certificates last for 90 days, it’s highly advisable to take advantage of this feature. You can test automatic renewal for your certificates by running this command:
$ sudo certbot renew --dry-run
