How to generate a Private Key using cPanel
If you want to provide secure financial transactions from your site then you will have to consider installing SSL certificate for your domain. Usually all ecommerce sites have this certificate installed on their site as having this secure seal on your site will attract more visitors for making financial transactions without any fear. If your site is hosted on linux server you will get cpanel as hosting control panel for your hosting account using which you can manage your hosting, one of main feature of cpanel is that you can install your SSL certificate yourself if your webhost allows you to do so. The domain for which you want to install SSL certificate should be hosted on dedicated IP, as SSL certificate can be installed only for domains hosted on Dedicated IP. You also need to have Private Keys and public keys for installing SSL certificate.
Following are steps for generating private key which is required for installing SSL you need to log into your cpanel, click on SSL Manager icon [ "SSL/TLS Manager" ] Now click on “ private Keys “ icon scroll down the page and get “Generate a New Key” and select the domain for which you wish to have SSL certificate.
Its always recommended to use “ www” in the box preceding the domain name which will point this certificate at “ www.domainname.com “ rather then “ http://domainname.com” this will prevent few errors which will occur if you are integrating this certificate with your shopping cart also error like “canonicalization errors” would be avoided.
If you want to have this certificate for subdomain like shopping.maindomain.com make sure you first create it suing your control panel and then proceed with above steps. You need to enter created subdomain name in the box before generating Key file.
Once you specified domain name you will have to click on the “Generate” button to create the Public Key file. Its always recommended to copy this information to a TEXT file as a backup copy. You can also “Fetch” the KEY file from the server at a later time, however there are chances that key file may become corrupted or is lost so its better to keep a backup copy of this file.
Depending upon the type of SSL Certificate you have ordered, you maybe required to purchase a new SSL Certificate if you need to change information (Domain, etc.) at a later date.
You should take care to preserve the privacy of this private key and should not be given out to any one, also, there is no way to recover a private key file if it is lost or damaged. Once you are ready with Private Key, then next step is to create a “Certificate Signing Request” which is also required to successful installation of SSL for required domain. If you are not much technically sound then you can request your webhosting service provider to help you out for getting SSL installed for your domain.
