SSL Configuration

One of the most important parts of software development— is security. So to make sure your users are surfing secure resource — you must do some obligatory steps that will help you to build secure and modern software. One of them — is configuring SSL on your website. Here we will speak about couple steps that will make your Nginx and Apache servers to work over HTTPS

Lets split this configuration guide into logical parts, so that will ease understanding of the content.

Purchase SSL from the well known providers

The SSL can be purchased on different resources like Godaddy, Cloudflare, etc. After this is done — you offered to download a pack with 3 files(in most cases)

• yourname.key — certificate key file
• yourname.crt — primary certificate file
• yourname-bundle.crt — intermediate certificate file

Upload downloaded SSL files to your server

Always the best way is to have all the things sorted so you will definitely know where to find particular file on a server.

• Create folder with name ssl under the /var, so you will the folder with the following path — /var/ssl

With the following structure it will be easy and logically for you to find appropriate files on the server if needed.

• Add correct permissions to the created folder, so system would then allow you to upload files.
• Then upload files you got from SSL provider to that ssl folder

Configure Nginx with SSL

• Install Nginx to to your Ubuntu instance

sudo apt-get install nginx

• Go to the folder where you have SSL files

cd /var/ssl

• For Nginx you need to create chained certificate file based on primary and intermediate certificate files

sudo cat yourname.crt yourname-bundle.crt > yourname.chained.crt

After this command — additional file will be created in the directory where you run it — yourname.chained.crt

• Open the ‘default’ file in /etc/nginx/sites-available/

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

• Insert the following content with correct data for your project

server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;
        server_name domain.com 0.11.222.333; // your server IP here
        return 301 https://domain.com$request_uri;
}
server {
        listen 443 ssl;
        server_name domain.com;
        ssl_certificate /var/ssl/yourname.chained.crt;
        ssl_certificate_key /var/ssl/yourname.key;

        location / {
        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header   Host $http_host;
        proxy_pass  "http://127.0.0.1:8080";
        }
}

• Then save changes, and restart Nginx

sudo systemctl restart nginx

SSL is configured, and when you check it in the browser, you will see it is running over HTTPS

Configure Apache with SSL

• Run this two commands on your Ubuntu instance

sudo a2enmod ssl
sudo a2ensite default-ssl

• Open default-ssl.conf file to put correct configs

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl.conf

• Insert the following content with correct data for your project

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName domain.com
        ServerAlias www.domain.com
        Redirect / https://domain.com/
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost _default_:443>
        ServerAdmin admin@example.com
        ServerName domain.com
                ServerAlias www.domain.com
                DocumentRoot /var/www/html
                ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
                CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
                SSLEngine on
                SSLCertificateFile /var/ssl/yourname.crt
                SSLCertificateKeyFile /var/ssl/yourname.key
                SSLCertificateChainFile /var/ssl/yourname-bundle.crt
<FilesMatch "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php)$">
        SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</FilesMatch>
<Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin>
        SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Directory>

<Directory /var/www/html>
        AllowOverride All
</Directory>

        BrowserMatch "MSIE [2-6]" \
        nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
        downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
        BrowserMatch "MSIE [17-9]" ssl-unclean-shutdown
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>

• Save configuration and restart apache2

sudo service apache2 restart

That’s it! Your Apache server is now configured with SSL. And when go to your domain or sub-domain(depends on what were you actually configuring) — you’ll see it’s running over HTTPS! Congratulations!

Thank you for reading! Want to get more? Visit oril.co for more articles and helpful information for software developers!

Cheers!