Comment by jadavis

11 years ago

If each domain name can get a non-wildcard cert for free, quickly, why do you need wildcard certs? For multi-subdomain hosting on one server? Just wondering.

7 comments

jadavis

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cmwright  11 years ago

For my previous use cases, it's ideal for dynamically created subdomains of a web application. If I know ahead of time, it's easy to grab a cert for any subdomain. However if a user is creating subdomains for a custom site or something similar, it's much nicer/easier to have the wildcard cert.

  • medmunds  11 years ago

    The lets-encrypt demo makes it look like you could easily script cert acquisition for new subdomains. And the CA domain validation appears to be totally automated (and fast).

    • X-Istence  11 years ago

      The downside is that now I have to manage and deal with multiple certs for all of my sub-domains, rather than dealing with a single cert/key pair.

dangrossman  11 years ago

Lots of services create dynamic subdomains in the form of "username.domain.com". To offer SSL on those domains without a wildcard certificate, you'd need to obtain a new certificate and a new IPv4 address every time a user signs up. You also need to update configuration and restart the web server process.