Generating a Certificate Signing Request
To install a digital certificate, you must first generate and submit a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) to the Certification Authority (CA). The CSR contains your certificate-application information, including your public key. Use your Web server software to generate the CSR, which will also create your public/private key pair used for encrypting and decrypting secure transactions.
If you are applying for an SSL certificate for a domain that is hosted with us, we generate and submit the CSR for you.
SSL certificates from Starfield® are compatible with all secure Web server software.
NOTE: When generating your CSR, specify a key size of 2048 or higher.
Click the applicable server name to view the instructions. If you don't know which server to select, ask your Web hosting provider.
Web Server List
About the Distinguished Name
During the creation of the CSR, you will be prompted to provide certain information about your organization. The Web server software will use this information to create your Web server certificate's distinguished name (DN). Distinguished names uniquely identify individual servers:
The distinguished name contains the following information:
Country Code: The two-letter International Organization for Standardization (ISO-) format country code for the country in which your organization is legally registered. Click here for a complete list of ISO country codes.
State/Province: Name of state, province, region, territory where your organization is located. Please enter the full name. Do not abbreviate
City/Locality: Name of the city/locality in which your organization is registered/located. Please spell out the name of the city/locality. Do not abbreviate.
Organization: The name under which your business is legally registered. The listed organization must be the legal registrant of the domain name in the certificate request. If you are enrolling as a small business/sole proprietor, please enter the certificate requester's name in the "Organization" field, and the DBA (doing business as) name in the "Organizational Unit" field.
Organizational Unit: Use this field to differentiate between divisions within an organization. For example, "Engineering" or "Human Resources." If applicable, you can enter the DBA (doing business as) name in this field.
Common name: The name entered in the "CN" (common name) field of the CSR MUST be the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) for the website you will be using the certificate for (e.g., "www.domainnamegoeshere"). Do not include the "http://" or "https://" prefixes in your common name. Do NOT enter your personal name in this field.
If you are requesting a wildcard certificate, add an asterisk (*) on the left side of the common name (e.g., "*.domainnamegoeshere.com"). This will secure all subdomains of the common name.
NOTE: If you enter "www.domainnamegoeshere.com" as the common name in your certificate signing request, the certificate will secure both "www.domainnamegoeshere.com" and "domainnamegoeshere.com."
