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What is CSR?

A Certificate Signing Request(CSR) is an encrypted text that should be generated from the webserver. It should be generated from the server where you install the certificate. CSR encloses the details of your domain and company information. The fields are explained below


Common Name: It is Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) that you want to secure (e.g. www.yourdomain.com)Note - For Wildcard SSL Certificate, the domain name must include *. in front of the domain (e.g. *.yourdomain.com)Organization Name: Your company's legally registered name (e.g ABC Pvt Ltd).

Organizational Unit: The unit or department that handles certificate(e.g. IT).

City/Locality: The city where your company is legally located.

State/Province Name: The state where your company is located (e.g. California).

Country: Two uppercase letters only (e.g. United States would be US and Great Britain would be GB).

Key Size: Select a key size 2048-bit (1024-bit is not supported anymore).

  • Once you generate the CSR, copy and paste the entire contents of the CSR including the parts

     -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- and -----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----     (See below for example)

Most common mistakes while generating Certificate Signing Request(CSR)

1) Enter correct common name or FQDN

 If the domain name is www.google.com, then common name should be one of the below

www.google.com

or

google.com

 What is wrong common name?

 i) Just mentioning the domain without tld is not acceptable. For example – google

 ii) Misspell the domain name

 iii) Adding . (dot) at the end of the domain name. For example – google.com.

2) Company Name

Enter the company name for which you are purchasing SSL certificate.

3) Enter the correct 2 letter country code.

For example - Country code for United Kingdom is GB.

4) Include 5 dashes

When copy and paste CSR in SSL generation order form, you must copy 5 dashes at the start & 5 dashes at the end of the CSR file.

 -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----

Encoded data

-----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST------

 5) Key Size

Key length should be minimum 2048 bit.