How-To install a certificate for SSL Encryption under IIS

jhoward — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 11:56:00 GMT

Following on from my post a couple of days ago about using MakeCert to generate a self-signed certificate, this is one way in which you can test that the generated certificate is working correctly for SSL authentication within IIS. It was almost worthy of a blogcast (BTW, congratulations Mike for joining in the fun), but given I've all but lost my voice at the moment, here's the old fashioned way.

Create a new folder such as c:\test, and within it, create a new default.htm file using notepad. The content doesn't matter, but here's a very simple example
<BODY>
This is my SSL protected site
</BODY>
Start Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager from the Administrative Tools folder
(I'm going to lead you through creating a new web-site, although I could assign the certificate to the default web-site)
Right-click on Web-sites and select New Web-Site
Follow through the wizard. When you get to "Description", enter the name "Test"
Keep going through the wizard, and enter c:\test on the path step
On the newly created site, right-click and select properties and select the Directory Security tab
Click Server Certificate and work your way through the wizard
Select Assign an existing certificate
Select your newly created certificate
Choose port 443 (default SSL port)
Click Next/OK to finish the wizard and exit the site properties.
Currently the web-site is stopped. Right click the Test web-site and choose start
Open a browser and go to https://jhoward-5160/test, replacing jhoward-5160 with your machines DNS name. Note the MSN Toolbar :-)
Double-click the padlock icon in the bottom right to view the certificate for your site

Congratulations! If everything works this far, you have managed to create and protect a test web-site using SSL encryption and a self-signed certificate generated using MakeCert.exe

John Howard - Senior Program Manager in the Hyper-V team at Microsoft : IIS, Website design, production or operation

How-To install a certificate for SSL Encryption under IIS