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We have a website that we are hosting from a MacBook. We would like to add an SSL certificate to the website itself. Is there a way to do this, or should we just add the SSL to the whole system?

We originally had this website hosted on another, older iMac running an outdated OS, which was compromised, we believe, through the website.

I am in the research phase so far and looking for as much information as possible regarding how to do this. So far, we have found that we can create a local (self-assigned) certificate for the entire system via the terminal, but I am unsure if this will also cover a hosted website. We also have access to third-party SSL certificates and would like to assign one to the hosted website.

Any constructive advice and help would be very much appreciated.

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Your webserver should have instructions on how to generate a certificate request, the process is generally:

1 Generate key-pair

2 define your 'name' (especially DNS and probably organization)

3 generate certificate signing request "CSR"

4 submit CSR to a certificate authority ("CA")

5 jump through a few hoops to prove you are not a liar bad guy

6 receive certificate

7 install certificate in your webserver

8 configure your webserver to use the certificate

9 test that you did it right

10 win!

Depending on your webserver the actuals steps will vary

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  • Hi Ram, Thank you for your response. Can you walk me through the steps (from step 1) to generate the "Key-pair" from the terminal on a Mac (OS Sonoma) for the hosted website? Then, the steps (step 7) to install the certificate on the website? Thank you in advance.
    – AJGomez
    Commented Jun 11 at 14:32
  • It depends on what you are using as a webserver @AJGomez
    – Ram
    Commented Jun 11 at 19:12
  • Hi Ram, Thanks again. The server Apple OS uses for hosting local websites is Apache. Would this help with a specific explanation for generating a key-pair and then installing it?
    – AJGomez
    Commented Jun 14 at 14:59
  • Are you going to expose this publicly? IE who are your expected users?
    – Ram
    Commented Jun 18 at 2:13
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    Yes, we want the SSL certificate because this site will be outside-facing, and the intended audience should be other scientists looking to retrieve uploaded information. I may have found the information I sought for creating and installing the SSL Certificate. Thank you for your advice up to this stage. If the links I found lead nowhere, I will update my question.
    – AJGomez
    Commented Jun 18 at 19:52

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