Azure Web App Godaddy Wild Card SSL Certificates plus IIS

Photo by Vijayasimha BR on Unsplash

A quick, short note about getting your wildcard SSL certificates on to your Azure web app with custom domain mapping.

By the time you reach this stage,

1. you should have already bought a domain from Godaddy
2. you have spun up your azure web app
3. mapped the web app to a custom domain.

I am not going to put any links on how to do the above. You need to do figure that out on your own.

That means, the only thing left to do, is to turn on that nice looking, https, lock symbol for your new azure web app.

In a nutshell.

1. Get the wild card domain purchase done from SSL. Please note, during purchase, you dont actually mention any domain names. You simply purchase a ‘wildcard’ certificate.
2. Then, you jump to IIS and create a ‘certificate request’
3. Then, you submit the ‘request’ to godaddy ‘SSL’ download section.
4. Then, you return to IIS and ‘complete the request’
5. Then, you can bind it, in IIS.
6. Then, in IIS, you can export it as PFX and password, which is what Azure Web App wants.
7. On your Azure Portal, upload the PFX with the password.

Kaboom! SSL!!!

Other things to note.

1. If you get the CSR directly generated from godaddy, that wont work. I mean, IIS wont complain but the certificate will keep disappearing. It makes sense because, that CSR obviously wont work with IIS because IIS never asked for it.
2. Also, I would recommend you spin up a VM on Azure to do all these things. I mean, sure, you can setup IIS on your own laptop or desktop, but why mess with all that for a one time task.
3. When you spin up a new VM, it wont have IIS already installed. You need to enable or install it, first.
4. Also, ‘binding’ is not really an essentially step. Whether you do it or not, you can still export PFX just fine.

Additional links.

SOLVED: Certificate Disappears From IIS After COMPLETE CERTIFICATE REQUEST on Server 2016

GoDaddy - IIS 8/Windows Server 2012: Generate CSRs (Certificate Signing Requests)

That’s all there is to it. Good luck with your SSL mapping. It is a pain, when it goes wrong.

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