Introduction
Sometimes, in our projects, we have to work with secure websites. And, most of the time, for development purposes it is not readily available before the development starts.
In this post, we will discuss the quickest way to arrange for a secure website, using self-signed certificates.
Let’s just start the process.
Create a locally signed certificate (IIS 7.5 is used here)
First of all, we need a certificate for creating an SSL website, and we know we don’t have any available SSL certificate. So, we will also create a local system certificate and use that to create an SSL website later.
First, select the root machine node, and then select the"Server Certificates" icon in the feature pane, as highlighted below:
![feature]()
You will see a screen like the image shown below. All existing certificates (if any) will be visible here. Click on “Create Self-Signed Certificate…”, as highlighted in below screen.
![Create Self-Signed Certificate]()
You will be asked to give your certificate a name. For now, give it a name “testSSL” and click on “OK”.
![testSSL]()
That’s it. You have a new certificate created and it will now be listed in certificate list, as shown below:
![certificate list]()
Create SSL site
OK, so the certificate creation part is now completed. Let’s now create a new SSL website using this certificate.
Open IIS. Right click on Sites and select “Add Web Site…”.
![Add Web Site]()
On clicking the “Add website…”, you will get a form, like below:
- Give your site a name - put “testSSL” for now.
- Provide a physical path where site content will be kept. In this example, I have created a simple one line HTML and put that in root folder. (HTML code snippet is provided at the end).
- In binding section, select https and Port as 443.
- Click on dropdown below SSL certificate and you will find the certificate we have just created above, listed there. Select that certificate.
- Click “OK”.
![Add Web Site]()
We are done. However, when you will run this newly created secured website, it will throw the following exception.
![Confirm]()
This is because the browser identifies the certificate as self-signed. Click on “Add Exception…” and confirm a security exception by clicking “Confirm Security Exception” as highlighted in next screen.
![Add Exception]()
For testing purposes, I have just added a small HTML file named Home.html, inside our root folder “C:\testSSL”.
The code for that html is as shown below:
- <!DOCTYPE html>
- <html>
-
- <body>
- <h1>This is a secure website</h1> </body>
-
- </html>
Now, when you will browse the secured website
https://localhost/Home.html, you will get a screen like the image below. Here we have a secured website now, which we can use well before actual SSL website with actual certificate available for actual use.
![output]()