How-To install a certificate for SSL Encryption under IIS
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