Installing Let's Encrypt SSL Certificates On Namecheap Hosting

Installing a certificate for the first time

This Gist has detailed instructions on how to install a Let's Encrypt SSL certificate for a web site hosted on Namecheap.

It references this Python script which conducts the challenge with Let's Encrypt that verifies control of the domain(s).

Renewing the certificate

Todo: figure out if there is a way to automate renewing the certificate. Right now it seems that it requires manually entering commands into a terminal.

• SSH to the server.
• Navigate to the directory containing Let's Encrypt keys and scripts, e.g. ~/letsencrypt/letsencrypt_nosudo/
• Generate a new signed certificate:

python sign_csr.py -f --public-key user.pub ./[DOMAIN]/domain.csr > ./[DOMAIN]/signed.crt

• This will first prompt for an admin email address.
• Then it will prompt for a series of commands to be entered, which create JSON files that are used by the signing script.
• Then it will prompt for a file to be installed on the server for each of the subdomains included in the certificate.
• (Those are the three steps that would need to be automated somehow.)

After verifying each of the domains, a signed certificate is created.

The certificate is installed with:

crt=`cat ./[DOMAIN]/signed.crt | python urlencode.py`
key=`cat ./[DOMAIN]/.key | python urlencode.py`
uapi SSL install_ssl domain=[MYDOMAIN.TLD] cert="$crt" key="$key"