However, if you want to postpone handling SSL and focus on building the administration
pages for the moment, you can. To make the solution configurable, we??™ll add a constant named
USE_SSL to the include/config.php file. If its value is yes, the secure areas will be forced to be
loaded through HTTPS; otherwise, they??™ll work via HTTP.
CHAPTER 10 ?– CATALOG ADMINISTRATION: DEPARTMENTS AND CATEGORIES 273
Obtaining an SSL Certificate
Obtaining a certificate is a relatively painless experience. We??™re covering here the steps required
to get a certificate from VeriSign, but the process is similar with the other providers as well.
The full instructions are available on the VeriSign web site (http://www.verisign.com/). You
can also get test certificates from VeriSign, which are free to use for a trial period. Here are the
basic steps:
1. Sign up for a trial certificate on the VeriSign web site.
2. Generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) on your web server. This involves filling
out various personal information, including the name of your web site, and so on. For
this to work, you need to install an SSL module in your web server, as described in the
tutorial at http://www.sitepoint.com/article/securing-apache-2-server-ssl.
3. Copy the contents of the generated CSR into the VeriSign request system.
4. Shortly afterward, you will receive a certificate from VeriSign to copy into your web
server to install the certificate.
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