An SSL Certificate protects your customers data in transit to and from your web server and permits them to identify your server based on the trust placed on the issuing Certificate Authority (CA).
This requires differing degrees of verification according to the certificate (e.g. Extended Verification) and consequently the generation process can vary between minutes and much longer.
When ordering the SSL certificate you will need basic information pertaining to your domain and access to one of the following email addresses:
admin@yourdomain.com
administrator@yourdomain.com
hostmaster@yourdomain.com
postmaster@yourdomain.com
webmaster@yourdomain.com
Ensure you can receive email to one of such addresses since an Approval request will be sent to it as the final step before the SSL certificate is shipped.
You have to own the domain!
The very core of the SSL cert process requires you to generate a Private key and based on that, a Certificate Signing Request (CSR). This process depends on the operating system you are running the web server on and where such files are then located on the server again depends on the operating system and web server sotftware. If you have specific questions contact Tech Support via a help system ticket from your account.
Note that SSL certificates are commonly thought of as being used just for web servers (e.g. https:// ) but they can be used for email in much the same way.
