SSL enabled with Apache and Certbot(Let’s Encrypt)

3 min readOct 5, 2022

What is Let’s Encrypt?

Let’s Encrypt is a non-profit certificate authority run by Internet Security Research Group.

It provides X.509 certificates for Transport Layer Security encryption at no charge. The certificate is valid for 90 days.

Install Apache and server maintain

Execute the following command to install Apache2:

sudo apt install apache2

Start and stop server

sudo systemctl stop apache2.service
sudo systemctl start apache2.service

Check the status

sudo systemctl enable apache2.service

Go to /etc/apache2/sites-available/ and create domain.com.conf.

<VirtualHost *:80>DocumentRoot /var/www/html
ServerName <DOMAIN_NAME>.com
ServerAlias www.<DOMAIN_NAME>.comErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

after installed ssl certificate using certbot, domain.com-le-ssl.conf is generated.

This is domain.com-le-ssl.conf file.

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost *:443>DocumentRoot /var/www/html
ServerName <DOMAIN_NAME>.com
ServerAlias www.<DOMAIN_NAME>.comErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combinedInclude /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/<DOMAIN_NAME>.com/fullchain.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/<DOMAIN_NAME>.com/privkey.pem
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>

000-default is a default preinstalled virtual host for apache2. Disable the default preinstalled virtual host using below command.

sudo a2dissite 000-default

Enable new domain.com.conf

sudo a2ensite domain.com.conf

After that we should need to restart the apache server.

Certbot installation and renewal process

Install certbot

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache

Here we are using apache plugin to configure the ssl certificate using certbot.

sudo certbot --apache

There are several steps to configure ssl certificates using apache.

configure email -> add your email address
Please read the terms of service -> Y
We’d like to send you email about our work
encrypting the web, EFF news, campaigns, and ways to support digital freedom -> N

after that there is an another option to select the domain which we need to enable ssl certificates. Those domain names are retrieving from the domain.com.conf file.

4. Which names would you like to activate HTTPS for?

5. Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access -> 2

SSL certificates provided by Let’s Encrypt are valid only for 90 days. The Certbot has a cronjob that will take care of renewing any SSL certificate that is within thirty days of expiration.