4. Obtain an SSL certificate and run your forum with HTTPS for free

Obtain an SSL certificate and run your forum with HTTPS for free

  • H

    Hi everybody, I've been trying to get a certificate for my server for a while. Now that I found solution I would like to share it, hoping everybody will start to use HTTPS to serve their forums.

    Before we start
    I will assume that you have a Unix system (which is necessary, I will be using Debian), your web server configured, as well as SSH access, and of course flarum installed. I will also assume that you are using Apache, if not you can find detailed guides on the links on the bottom.

    Part1: Get the client
    Let's start getting the letsencrypt client: run

    git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt && cd letsencrypt
    Now we are going to install and update the client and its dependencies:

    sudo ./letsencrypt-auto --help
    Part2: Get and install the certificate
    Before the next step ensure that the 443(TLS) port is open
    After that we are going to actually install the certificate

    sudo ./letsencrypt-auto --apache -d your.domain.com
    This will automagically request the certificate and install it in your apache configuration.
    Now restart apache:

    sudo service apache2 restart
    Part3: Configure flarum
    The certificate should now be up and running, to ensure that just accessyour domain at https://your.domain.com

    Now we need to make sure that flarum is pointing to https. In you flarum home directory, open config.php and edit the line

    'url' => 'http://your.domain.com'
    to
    'url' => 'https://your.domain.com'

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