Certificate has been created, but the domain is not secure

I have created a certificate, but the domain I used for the certificate does not have https. I am using duckdns for my domain with challenge type dns-01, with certificate authority Let’s Encrypt, and deployed to generic server.
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Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

The app takes care of acquiring the certificate from the certificate authority but it won’t configure your web server to redirect from http to https. So you would at least have to access your site via https://<your domain>

For IIS it will configure the https binding for an existing site if the https/https binding for that site mentions the same domain included on the certificate, for other web server types that configuration is up to you.

You mentioned deploying to generic server, so I’m guessing you’re using Apache, nginx or a Node based server?

Thank you sir for responding! I have tried adding the https to the url, but the https is crossed out.

Is your web server IIS or something else? Try to provide as much information as you can to get help, otherwise I have to keep guessing.

I am making the certificate for my sql server to make it secure, but when I went to the domain to check if it is secure, the domain did not have https. I may have left out something from my process of making the certificate, if I did, please let me know, sir.

Here is how I made the certificate, in chronological order:

  • Got a subdomain from DuckDNS
  • Created the certificate
  • Added my subdomain from DuckDNS to the certificate
  • Went to Advanced > Certificate Authority, and changed the CA to Let’s Encrypt
  • Went to Authorization and changed the Challenge Type to dns-01
  • Changed the DNS Update Method to Manual
  • Requested the Certificate for the txt record info
  • Added the txt record to my subdomain
  • Requested the Certificate
  • Certificate was successfully activated
  • Changed Deployment mode to “No deployment”
  • Added deployment task “Deploy on generic server”, outputs are all .pem file except for the private key file, which is .key file
  • Ran the task
  • Went to SSCM (Sql Server Configuration Manager
  • In SSCM, I went to SQL Server Network Configuration > Protocols for (servername) > Properties > Certificate, and selected my certificate.
    Another thing to add; If the certificate can be secure without the domain having https, please let me know of that too. Thank you, sir!

Thanks, so there are two stages here:

  • Getting your certificate from your choice of CA
  • Deploying your certificate to the services that will use it

You are already managing to get your certificate ok, but your deployment (applying it to SQL server) is perhaps not quite right.

When deploying a certificate for SQL Server you can either setup a certificate for the SQL Server service connections (for use with Management studio or other connections) or you might want to configure certificates for other SQL Server related services such as Reporting Services (which may or may not be through IIS).

Note that a certificate may have nothing at all to do with HTTPS (which is just one way of using a certificate and is used to secure communication with a web server). In your case you may not have or need https at all.

I think you are just trying to get a certificate specifically for the SQL Server service connections through management studio etc. These do not use HTTPS, these use TLS. Transport Layer Security and digital certificates - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn

You would normally just store the certificate in the local machine certificate store (the default) and select the certificate from the SSCM dropdown list, you shouldn’t need to import it unless the app is all running on a different machine. That said, if your manual import is working OK then have you checked if secure connections (not HTTPS, SQL Server connections) now work via management studio or an app?

Here is an example powershell script you can perhaps adapt and use with the Run Powershell Script deployment task to deploy to SQL Server: Scripting | Certify The Web Docs

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This is the perfect answer! Thank you sir!

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