Easily Generate and Install a $57 Custom FileMaker Server SSL Certificate
Apr 08, 2015 02:54 PM
Generating and getting a custom SSL Certificate for FileMaker Server is much more complicated than it should be. Last year, I personally spent much more time that it should have taken to get it to work. Unfortunately, FileMaker Inc doesn’t provide detailed instructions on how to get through the process.
NOTE: Ketan Parekh sent us a note letting us know that the "NameCheap GeoTrust QuickSSL Premium Certificate" no longer work with FileMaker Server due to this issue.
Last year, I was able to get a Comodo InstantSLL Certificate to work great, but it cost $100 for a year. That certificate is expiring next week, so the timing of this was perfect. Before creating these instructions, I tried to follow the instructions that Tim Dietrich provided to create a certificate with MediaTemple. Luckily, when I went to spend the $75 for the certificate, I found out that you cannot buy a cert from MediaTemple if you don’t use any of their other services. I would have bought two… They suggested that I go directly to GeoTrust, but that was even more expensive than the Comodo certificate.
This time, I Googled for 'GeoTrust QuickSSL Certificate' and saw on the first page of the results that NameCheap.com had the exact same certificate for $57. That’s about half off the Comodo certificate and about 25% off the MediaTemple certificate!
As an extra bonus, I recently moved the CampSoftware.com website from GoDaddy to NameCheap.com recently. Overtime I went to pay for new services or even renew a service, GoDaddy would up sell products I don’t need and the payment process was overly complicated. NameCheap.com’s main feature is to make the process easy and affordable. With GoDaddy, they charged their max rate every time, forcing me to look for coupons to get the price down to a reasonable level.
So, I took a slight chance and ordered the $57 NameCheap GeoTrust QuickSSL Premium Certificate and it worked perfectly!
Try out the following instructions and let me know if you run into any problems. There are some Mac specific instructions, but we’ll update this ASAP.
Last year, I was able to get a Comodo InstantSLL Certificate to work great, but it cost $100 for a year. That certificate is expiring next week, so the timing of this was perfect. Before creating these instructions, I tried to follow the instructions that Tim Dietrich provided to create a certificate with MediaTemple. Luckily, when I went to spend the $75 for the certificate, I found out that you cannot buy a cert from MediaTemple if you don’t use any of their other services. I would have bought two… They suggested that I go directly to GeoTrust, but that was even more expensive than the Comodo certificate.
This time, I Googled for 'GeoTrust QuickSSL Certificate' and saw on the first page of the results that NameCheap.com had the exact same certificate for $57. That’s about half off the Comodo certificate and about 25% off the MediaTemple certificate!
As an extra bonus, I recently moved the CampSoftware.com website from GoDaddy to NameCheap.com recently. Overtime I went to pay for new services or even renew a service, GoDaddy would up sell products I don’t need and the payment process was overly complicated. NameCheap.com’s main feature is to make the process easy and affordable. With GoDaddy, they charged their max rate every time, forcing me to look for coupons to get the price down to a reasonable level.
So, I took a slight chance and ordered the $57 NameCheap GeoTrust QuickSSL Premium Certificate and it worked perfectly!
Try out the following instructions and let me know if you run into any problems. There are some Mac specific instructions, but we’ll update this ASAP.
- Buy the NameCheap GeoTrust QuickSSL Premium Certificate: http://j.mp/FileMakerServerSSLCert
- Generate the request certificate on the FileMaker Server.
- On Mac: sudo fmsadmin certificate create /CN=dagobah.campsoftware.com/C=US/O=CampSolutionsInc
- Copy the contents of the FileMaker Server/CStore/serverRequest.pem file.
- On Mac: Drag the serverRequest.pem file to TextEdit on and the copy the entire contents of the file.
- In your NameCheap Panel, set up your certificate: https://manage.www.namecheap.com/myaccount/ssl-list.asp
- Click 'Activate Now' for your 'QuickSSL Premium' certificate.
- Select 'Other' for the Web Server Type
- Paste the contents of the serverRequest.pem file that you copied earlier.
- Click Next
- Choose Email Address for the domain in which you can receive an email.
- Click Next
- Check the Admin Contact settings and make sure you can receive an email from the email address where the cert will be sent.
- Click Submit Order
- Check for the email to approve the certificate. Check your junk mail if you don’t find it.
- Click the approve web link in the email.
- Wait for the page to load and approve the certificate.
- Wait for the certificate to be emailed to you. Check your junk mail if you don’t find it.
- In the email, look for the Web Server Certificate and create a text file containing the text from and including '-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE——' to '-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----'. Save it as 'serverCustom.pem'.
- Import the serverCustom.pem file.
- On Mac: sudo fmsadmin certificate import