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If anyone is interested in a Let's Encrypt solution but doesn't feel like spending a ton of time figuring it all out, I recently released a course[0] that cover

• codingdave 9y ago
  OK, but... if you don't already have a server and a domain name set up, why are you looking for a course on Let's Encrypt? Wouldn't the more appropriate use case be to list out the most common server setups, and instruct how to add Let's Encrypt to existing setup? Of course, when I was setting it up, Googling gave me pretty clear instructions, so a course wasn't needed, but depending on the exact server setup people have, maybe some installs are harder than others...
  • nickjj 9y ago
    Hi, Most of the course is going over a bunch of common server set ups (1 static site, multiple sites on the same server, reverse proxies) along with going over how Let's Encrypt works and how you can apply it to nginx / Apache. About 20 minutes out of the 3 hours of content is dedicated to registering a domain name and setting up the server itself. I added those sections because it makes the course an end to end solution on how to go from "hey, I have my site on my own computer but how the heck do I securely host it on the internet?" to really doing it. That decision was guided by feedback from existing people who have contacted me and asked for that information specifically. Lots of people have applied the course's content to their existing set up. That's how most people ended up following along.
  • pilsetnieks 9y ago
    > Wouldn't the more appropriate use case be to list out the most common server setups, and instruct how to add Let's Encrypt to existing setup? I think the EFF already got that covered: https://certbot.eff.org https://certbot.eff.org
    • nickjj 9y ago
      certbot works, but I'm not a fan of using it. I'd much rather configure nginx / Apache myself so I know exactly what's happening and can mold the solution to fit whatever use cases I have.
      • jloughry 9y ago
        certbot --standalone You'll need to turn off your web server for a minute or two while certbot runs ('standalone' means it starts up a temporary web server of its own and binds to port 80 for a moment) but then it leaves the new certificate for you in a few files in /usr/local/ somewhere, and you proceed to edit the nginix.conf file yourself. It works great.
        • majewsky 9y ago
          You don't need to turn off your webserver, you can use `certbot certonly --webroot -w /path/to/docroot ...` where /path/to/docroot points to the document root, i.e. the root directory of the website contents, provided that your webserver is listening on port 80 (HTTP). On my personal servers, I have the regular webserver configured to listen on port 443 (HTTPS) only, and I have a separate webserver on port 80 that's only used for ACME challenges. All other HTTP requests are immediately upgraded to HTTPS. Among other things, this split solves the cyclic dependency between the webserver not starting without TLS certificates, but also being required to provision certificates. Details: https://blog.bethselamin.de/posts/how-i-run-certbot.html https://blog.bethselamin.de/posts/how-i-run-certbot.html
        • Xoros 9y ago
          You can also use the dns challenge and not worrying for the web server at all.