Let's Encrypt

The Internet is strange. Things are either extremely expense and difficult to do, or free.

I've had a bear of a time over the years with expensive SSL Certificates. I would buy an expensive SSL certificate, install it manually. For some odd reason, I always had a bear of a time renewing the stupid things. The documentation from the certificate authorities selling the products was outdated and poorly written. The documentation did not provide answers that I encountered with my last certificates.

I had been following the groups creating free certificates. They were buggy at first.

Today, I just got a bunch of free certificates from Lets Encrypt . The installation was a breeze. I followed the instructions on [Digital Ocean] . To install on Ubuntu, one needs to execute four simple scripts and answer some simple questions.

The free certificates are good for only 90 days ... but it appears that one can renew by executing a single line of code on my server.

I guess LetsEncrypt assumes that a person who has root access to a server is an authority for the server.

NOTE: Lets Encrypt has a donate page . I might donate when I renew a few months from now.

What is really interesting is that, because they are providing the certificates for free, they created a better interface for the product than companies that charge and arm and a leg for the same service.

Anyway, I installed an SSL certificate on my primary blog and will soon announce the project that I am working on. The project had a log in screen and I wanted a secure connection for the log in page.

This is the picture I put on the splash page for my blog: