Multiple domain names, one IP Address..SSL?????

[lefty78]

This is a pre-production question.

If I have multiple domain names, all pointing to the same IP address, will one valid SSL certificate work?

Will I need one SSL per domain name?

Can it be set so that when a user types

http://www.otherdomainname.com

they are immeditaely redirected to

http://www.maindomain.com

(and their browser actually shows

http://www.maindomain.com,

not what they typed) where the SSL resides?

Lost here. THanks

 

[JillC]

You need to ask your hosting company. Generally speaking, you have one domain with all your files including the SSL, and the other sites are mirrored to your main site. Whatever works on your main site will work on the mirrors.

 

[johnwm]

Not sure, but I was lead to believe that an SSL cert only appliaed to a specific domain name (ready to be corretced)

However if you want several domain names to be immediately redirected then use a 301 permanent redirect

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[gbaughma]

What if it was looking at a common page, and that page was doing redirects based on header information? Wouldn't that do with one SSL cert then?



Just my 2¢
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[theEclipse]

lefty-

Most registrars provide the ability to turn on domain forwarding. I believe that this is what you are looking for. It will allow you facilitate the correct behavior in funneling all of your domain names into your primary domain name and then you can provide one ssl cert for that primary domain name.

Robert Carpenter
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[Hondy]

Lefty

if you have multiple domains you will need multiple certificates unless you use a wilcard cert.

When you have normal HTTP, you can use host headers to separate the domains out on the same IP. Unfortunately you cant use host headers with SSL - SO, this means that each SSL will need its own IP address.

So, to answer your question each domain will need its own SSL cert unless they are subdomains and you are using a wildcard. Otherwise you will need to redirect all of the non-SSL domains to a single domain which you have bought SSL for. By its very nature, SSL ties its security into an exact FQDN, if they don't match then you will get an SSL error in the browser.

Soooo... if you want to buy one SSL, redirect all your non SSL domains to your SSL protected domain. You can do this with a 302 permanent redirect in your web server or not as good via a meta refresh in the page which isn't as good.

Hope it helps