Use Let’s Encrypt to add an SSL certificate to your Dreamhost-hosted site
Update 2/2016: You don’t need to follow any of the instructions in this post any more! You can just enable a Let’s Encrypt certificate in the Dreamhost panel! But if you want to generate your own Let’s Encrypt certificate locally and add it to your site, keep reading, original post follows …
EFF’s Let’s Encrypt initiative just made getting a free, CA-signed server certificate easier than it’s ever been before. Running a single command generates everything you need, obtains the public cert and even installs it into your webserver of choice. So let’s encrypt, and move the web closer to HTTPS everywhere!
Here’s a quick tutorial for using Let’s Encrypt with Dreamhost’s shared hosting. It’s not quite automatic, since you’ll have to copy-paste 3 things into boxes via the Dreamhost web panel, but it’s a lot simpler than the alternatives. As someone who’s done this the old way countless times, Let’s Encrypt was shockingly easy! more …