Cannot activate free SSL

Regardless of which hosting control panel you use, you can activate a free SSL certificate for your site.

Once you activate it and set up redirection to the HTTPS protocol, your site will open using a secure connection.

There are several reasons why activation may fail.
Below we will look at the most common reasons and how to solve them.

Domain is not directed to hosting

To activate SSL for your site on NIC.UA hosting you must first direct your domain to hosting.

Please note, after setting up a domain, it may take from 4 to 24 hours for the Internet providers DNS cache update and the settings will take effect.

Access to the .well-known/acme-challenge folder is blocked

When generating a certificate, a temporary file is created in the folder .well-known/acme-challenge and the certification center checks this file at http://DOMAIN.COM/.well-known/acme-challenge.

Therefore, access to this folder must be allowed.

If you get an error message like this when installing the certificate:

The system queried for a temporary file at “http://DOMAIN.COM/.well-known/acme-challenge/XXXXXXXXXXX”, but the web server responded with the following error: 404 (Not Found). A DNS (Domain Name System) or web server misconfiguration may exist.

you need to check your .htaccess file settings.

Your site should allow access to "http://DOMAIN.COM/.well-known/acme-challenge".

You have activated your certificate for 100 domains and subdomains on your hosting

This limit on hosting is difficult to achieve. Especially considering that the maximum plan allows you to add no more than 10 domains.

But considering that the number of subdomains and aliases on your hosting is not limited, then there were cases where this limit is exceeded.

This is relevant to cPanel, where you simply click the 'Run AutoSSL' button and the certificate is generated immediately for all domains and subdomains that are added to your hosting.

In this case, you can exclude extra subdomains from the SSL list by clicking 'Exclude from AutoSSL' in the ' SSL/TLS Status' section.