I have been looking into SSL certificates for My Book It. When the site was being created, it was decided that My Book It would use sub domains to provide the school with the ability to have their school name at the start of the address. (I think this is a fairly professional way to do it)
The issue that has come up is that for me to provide SSL protection to the site I need to look at a wild card SSL certificate instead of a standard SSL. Given that Wild card SSL certificates are significantly more expensive it has been a difficult thing to get going as My Book It is still starting.
The whole certificate issue came to a head recently when I setup a Remote App installation for myself to test out how it all works. Without a valid Certificate the process to connect to the Remote App involves 3 different clicks. In a corporate environment this would not be acceptable.
After some searching I found a company called StartSSL who offered a free class 1 certificate. At first I was sceptical about their offering. (I figured that it mustn’t be any good if you don’t have to pay for it).
I figured that the Remote Apps deployment is a test, so why not give this free CA a try and see how they go, even if the certificate had to be renewed each month then it would be an OK trade off.
I have to admit that the site itself is a little clunky, but if you have previous experience with setting up SSL certificates then you should be able to find your way through the free class 1 certificates without any issues.
In about 15 minutes, I was completely up and running with a free SSL certificate, which was a pleasant surprise.
After looking into them further, I decided that I would give them ago for the wild card SSL certificate. This required that I verify my identify so I started the process by sending them some documents that they asked for, within 24 hours I recieved a phone call asking me to verify those details. Once this was confirmed I paid the verification fee (about $88 AUD) and now I can create the wild card SSL certificates.
So far. so good.