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If I have my virtual host configured as:


<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName foo.com
    ServerAlias www.foo.com
    Include conf.d/foo.conf
</VirtualHost>

Can I get by with a single domain SSL certificate or must I purchase a wildcard SSL certificate to handle the www subdomain?

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up vote 4 down vote

To prevent a Common Name mismatch, you will need to purchase either a wildcard certificate or a Subject Alternative Name (SAN) certificate. The SAN certificate will allow you to specify multiple CN. SAN certificates are also known as Unified Communications Certificates.

If cost is an issue, it is not unreasonable to only use SSL for www.domain.com and not domain.com. It is often more difficult to justify the additional cost for wildcard certificates.

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Standard GoDaddy certificates provide both www.domain.com and domain.com in the "Certificate Subject Alt Name" field. Other vendors may do this as well. In practice this does prevent the need for using a wildcard certificate to deal with the www and non-www case. – iPaulo Mar 18 '10 at 18:51
Comodo, DigiCert, and Globalsign add a free www as well – Robert Mar 22 '10 at 14:59
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