How do I install an SSL Certificate after it has been issued?

We should have a guide available to help you with this. Which guide you need depends on several factors that weren't mentioned here like the distro, specific web server, and type of certificate you're using.

As you may notice in our documentation about SSL Certificates, we tend to lean toward recommending that customers use Let's Encrypt/Certbot to manage SSL Certificates. We have guides for various distros and web servers for anyone who wants to go that route. If you used Let's Encrypt already, you may be able to follow one those guides.

If you already have a certificate from somewhere else, you can still likely find the information in one of our SSL Cert guides to do this manually. I'll use our Debian/Ubuntu Guide as an example.

That guide explains the changes you'd need to make to your Apache configurations to get it to use HTTPS with your cert. This includes making sure that the SSLEngine is on, the SSLCertificateFile points to the .crt file for your domain, and that the SSLCertificateKeyFile points to the RSA private key.

Once you've updated all the necessary configurations, you'll then need to make sure the Apache SSL module is enabled, enable the virtualhost configuration, and then restart Apache.

This guide assumes you've already followed one of two other guides to either:

• Obtain a Commercially Signed TLS Certificate or
• Create a Self-Signed TLS Certificate

Since you said you already have the cert ready to go, you may not need to visit either of those. However, I'd recommend taking a look at the relevant guide just to make sure you didn't miss any steps during that process.

While we have guides for other Distros for Apache, our guide for using SSL with NGINX isn't distro-specific and might require some variation in commands.

Ultimately, whatever method you use, it seems like it will boil down to these basic steps:

1. Making sure the SSL Module is enabled for your web server
2. Storing, backing up, and setting permissions for your certificate and key
3. Updating your virtual host/.conf files
4. Enabling your updated configurations and restarting your web server.

While those general steps should help, I strongly recommend trying to find a specific guide for your situation. If you're not seeing a guide that applies to you and you'd like one for the future, feel free to reach out to support@linode.com or fill out our feedback form and we can pass along your feedback to the appropriate team.