Question

How to add an Lets encrypt certificate dynamically using CNAME verification?

Posted on February 22, 2020
Ubuntu 18.04 MySQL Security Apache PHP
Asked by C K

I have been working on a web app where users can create custom profiles of them and see it on their custom domain by adding an A record and CNAME record. If they have their profile on https://webapp.com/profile they can connect it with https://usercustomdomain.com/.

I’ve figured how to display the profile to the custom domain, but I its showing web page not secure. I tried to add SSL on that custom domain manually but then I have 2 problems:

Every time a user connects a domain I’ve to add a SSL manually.
It replaces the default website i.e. mywebapp.com 000-default-ssl.conf file in /etc/apache2/ to the users custom domain.

So, how do I lets encrypt add custom domain by verifying the cname automatically?

Appreciate your help!

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• February 23, 2020

Accepted Answer

Hello,

If I understand this correctly, it sounds like that you need some kind of automation to create a new Nginx server block for each website, and then install the Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate for the new domain.

That way if you have a separate Nginx server block for each site, it would not override the content of your 000-default-ssl.conf config file.

Another option would be to ask your customers to use Cloudflare, that way you would not have to install Let’s Encrypt on your Droplet directly, but they would be able to use Cloudflare’s SSL certificates instead.

Hope that this helps! Regards, Bobby