how to use a shared ssl certificate?

im in the process of setting my store up.
where i have my site hosted, they offer the use of their shared ssl certificate.
can someone tell what i need to do to be able to take ordered over the shared ssl certificate? id like the orders to be placed in a file in a secured directory?

thanks,
ed

The problem using a shared cert is that your customers will get a "Security Error: Domain Mismatch", because your domain name doesn't match the cert of your hosting company. Always better to buy your own.

The SSL doesn't put your files in a secure directory, it's only used for secure login and secure form submissions.

https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=14

The above FAQ should help you set up your site to use a shared certificate without getting any errors.

Cool.. that's something I didn't know.

So does that mean the "YOUR_SECURE_SERVER.net" refers to the authenticating company which issued the certificate? Or is it the hosting company the certificate resides on?

It is the hosting company your cart resides on.

A good example would. Lets say your hosting company is mansoortech.com and they have a shared ssl for their account holders to use. Lets also assume you have an account with them and the name of the account is "jetx".

To use the shared ssl you would write

https://mansoortech.com/~jetx

Hope that helps. Do read the FAQ carefully because there are three major different ways SHARED SSL is setup on web hosts.

Regards,
Jeff.

Thanks enigma, stirs a recollection that I once briefly read about it.. and dismissing it for that reason.

So far as I can tell, I've followed the instructions in the tutorial, this thread, and from my ISP, but I'm getting the mismatch error. My almost live cart is at http://www.medievalwares.com/zt/ . I've changed both configure.php files, and set both catalogue and Admin to SSL= true. Suggestions?
mark

Did you check with your hosting site that this shared certificate is setup correctly and that they have given you the right URL to work with?

From the islandnet.com FAQ:
"All our web servers are configured with a high-security SSL certificate and customers may take advantage of this to provide encrypted access to their site at no extra charge. However, because security certificates are tied to a specific domain name, visitors to your site will get a security warning if you try this with your own domain name. Instead you should use an URL of the format https://www.islandnet.com/~YourUserName. That will avoid the security warning because the URL is constructed with the same domain name as the certificate. "
That's the format I've used, and it's what is showing up on the browser.
mark

Actually you are not ... :cry:

Your site is setup without the www on both your non-secure and secure pages ...

Try changing that in the:
/includes/configure.php
/admin/includes/configure.php

See if it doesn't work better ...

gauker, you are using the wrong url. As per your ISP instructions you need to add the tilda (~).

The correct URL is http://www.medievalwares.com/~zt/

I tried it and it worked fine.

Cheers,
Jeff.

Let me correct that... You cannot use http://www.medievalwares.com/~zt/ because you do not have a SSL for your domain medievalwares.com. You have to use the domain on which the SSL is. In this case it is islandnet.com.

They way to use the shared ssl is

https://(servername).islandnet.com/~zt/

where servername is the server you are on. Try logging on to PLESK/CPANEL, whichever one your ISP supports and in the main page you should see the server name. Use that server name and you should be good to go.

Cheers.

actually enigma, you must have allowed the URL in cache

actually the correct url to use will be

https://www.islandnet.com/~gaukler

this is the secure server, symlinked to your account and then the store url

this is what you need to have in the https defines

just this nothing else,

the /zt/ will be added below

Heres what worked for me using a shared certificate, the main unix username is sonethrw but that isn't where the website was that I wanted to put the ssl on so the https link had to be:

https://secure.hostmonster.com/~sonethrw/ultrapurecosmetics

ultrapurecosmetics is the name of the actual website that the ssl needed to be applied to.
I use hostmonster for hosting and the way that they setup their accounts is that all of the websites that I host are underneath my main website directly.
Hope this helps someone.

Thanks, Ajeh. The addition of the www fixed the error. I hadn't added it because none of the HTTP or HTTPS lines in the Zen-modified configure.php files ( which included my domain name) used the www.
mark

so with zencart id have to copy what files to that shared ssl folder?

ed

If your host dosnt have a symlik for SSL then you will need to move a copy of the entire store into the SSL folder
making sure to modify the config files ( in the ssl folder ) to recognize the new server path