You only need a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) if you're buying an SSL certificate from a certificate authority, for example an organization-validated (OV) or extended-validation (EV) certificate. For a normal website, the free certificate is enough: see Install a Free SSL Certificate.
Create the CSR
- Log in to the Client Area, go to Services > My Services and open your hosting service.
- Click Log in to cPanel in the menu on the left.
- In cPanel, click SSL/TLS Certificates. You can also type its name into the Search Tools box at the top.
- Open the Requests tab and choose to create a new request.
- Enter the domains the certificate should cover (for example
yourdomain.comandwww.yourdomain.com). - Fill in your organization details exactly as the certificate authority will check them: city, state, country, company name and division. Leave the key settings at their defaults unless the certificate authority asks for something else.
- Save the request. cPanel creates a private key in the Keys tab at the same time.
- Open the request and copy the text from
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----to-----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----. Paste it into the certificate authority's order form.
Important: Don't delete the private key in the Keys tab. The certificate you receive only works with the key that was created with the CSR.
Install the certificate you receive
- Open SSL/TLS Certificates again and go to the Installation tab.
- Choose the domain, paste the certificate into the certificate box and the intermediate (CA bundle) into its box, then install it.
If your certificate authority didn't include the CA bundle, see How to get the Intermediate CA bundle.
Remove an old CSR
On the Requests tab, delete requests you no longer need. Deleting a request doesn't affect installed certificates.
