Installing and Updating Plesk SSL Certificate

By Paulus, 21 July, 2010

When Plesk is installed, a self-signed SSL certificate is generated which will expire in a year is generated and used for when you access the Plesk control panel. This is all fine and dandy. However, when people go to example.com:8443 they will receive a warning message about the certificate. 

Using www.example.com we want to access Plesk and have a certificate that has been signed by a trusted authority. 

  1. Log in to Plesk as the admin user
  2. Click on Server on the right navigation under System
  3. Click on the Certificates icon
  4. Click on Add new Certificate
  5. Fill in all the required fields
  6. Click on the Request button in the "Preference" section. This will take you back to the listing of all available SSL certs. 
  7. Click on the newly created Certificate.
  8. Take the CSR to who ever your getting your SSL Certificate from.
  9. Copy the Private key which is given to you on this screen and pate it in the Certificate text field.
  10. If you have the CA certificate from your trusted Authority, paste it into the text field labeled CA Certificate. This is not required.
  11. Click on the Send Text button in the section labeled Upload Certificate as text
  12. This will take you back to the screen where it lists all available Certificates.
  13. Place a check box next to the certificate that you want the Plesk Control panel to use.
  14. Above the listing of certificates, you will see Secure control panel. Click that and that's it. When you go to https://www.example.com:8443 you can check to see if Plesk is using the new certificate.3

In the event that you created something like controlpanel.example.com and tried installing the certificate there, you will need to move it.

  1. Follow steps 1-5 from above.
  2. Paste the Private Key into the Private Key text field.
  3. Paste the Certificate into the Certificate text field.
  4. Click Send Text
  5. Follow steps 12-14 from above.