This article describes how to attain and import the SSL certificate keys you need to secure your contest with your custom subdomain.
PEM Format Overview
The PEM format is the most common file-encoded format that an SSL certificate provider (certificate authority) issue certificates in to organizations or individuals after verifying their identity. PEM certificates usually have extensions such as .pem, .crt, .cer, and .key. They are Base64 encoded ASCII files (you can open files in a standard text editor) and contain "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----" and "-----END CERTIFICATE-----" statements. Server certificates, intermediate certificates, and private keys can all be put into the PEM format.
Amazon Web Services provides a good example of what to look for in the certificate files and what to copy, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm/latest/userguide/import-certificate-format.html
Acquiring SSL certificate
As an example, you can purchase an SSL certificate from an organisation such as GoDaddy.com. The steps you typically follow are:
1. Generate Certificate Signing Request (CSRs)
Before you can request your SSL, you must generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) from your server. GoDaddy instructions below:
Make sure that you copy the private key at this step as this is required by the ContestPad SSL setup.
2. Verify the SSL certificate
After you request an SSL certificate, you need to verify that you control all domain names listed in your request.
GoDaddy instructions are provided below:
3. Download SSL certificate files
Once you have verified your SSL certificate then you need to download your certificate files. The example GoDaddy instructions are listed below.
Go to your GoDaddy product page.
Click SSL Certificates and then Manage next to the certificate you want to download.
Click Download.
Select the Server "Apache"
Click Download ZIP file. Your certificate will download.
Adding SSL information to Launchpad6
Once you have downloaded your SSL certificate files to your computer you need to copy the content of your private key (this was created when you generated your CSR - .key) and certificate files (this you would have just downloaded) into the appropriate fields in Launchpad.
When copying the content from the files use only a basic text edit such as NotePad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac – in PlainText mode https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/textedit-plain-text-mode/)
Copying the full contents of private key
Copy to the Certificate private key field in Launchpad6.
Copy the contents of certificate
Copy to the Certificate body field in Launchpad6.
If you have been provided certificate chain please copy this as well
Copy to the Certificate chain field in Launchpad6.
Note: Certain Certificate Authority may not provide a certificate chain, in that case you can ignore this field.