Tell me more ×
Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional system and network administrators. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 1 down vote favorite

I have one domain xyz.com but it is a subdomain of abc.com (xyz.abc.com). I have installed a SSL certificate for xyz.com but it doesn't work.

Congratulations! your request for a thawte SSL123 Certificate has been approved and the certificate is included in this email.

Should I buy another SSL certificate for xyz.abc.com or one for abc.com?

share|improve this question

2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

You should buy a certificate that covers whatever your users will type into their browsers, and whatever there are internal links to. It might be cheaper to experiment with self-signed certificates until you are clear what is needed.

There may be a problem if you do not own abc.com, as the CA will not issue a certificate (as that is rather the point: imagine that abc.com is your bank, and fraudsters are trying to buy certificates for subdomains of your bank).

When you say the certificate does not work, it should warn users this is not xyz.com, and encrypt traffic if users click through anyway. That means the certificate works. If nothing at all happens, you have not installed it correctly.

share|improve this answer
Thee user are going to type "(www.)xyz.com" and the certificate was applied to that domain. Maybe it was installed wrong, or the CSR wasn't generated properly (it was rejected 3 times because of the country code: "PE"). We own abc.com. Also, there is no warning message, just it is not working. I will contact (again) the hosting provider who sell us the certificate. Thanks for your help. – Jose Adrian May 22 '12 at 2:53
up vote 0 down vote

Yes, you should obtain another certificate for your subdomain xyz.

the issued certificate is for abc.com so it won't work on any other subdomain.

Users will get a warning message while opening https://xyz.abc.com saying that the Certificate not Trusted, or the certificate has been issued to other domain name.

So you bind different certificate to different site names.

share|improve this answer
The issued certificate is for xyz.com. We generated the CSR for that domain and then we send it to the hosting provider. There is no warning message so it's 100% sure that it wasn't installed properly. xyz is a subdomain of abc; but it is also domain. – Jose Adrian May 22 '12 at 2:55

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.