Sorry for along post, but I need to set the stage for my question. I have been using Windows+Apache+Certbot as a web server since Windows XP and have recently upgraded to Windows 11. I have a Lets Encrypt certificate and Certbot was working fine until I upgraded to Win 11. It failed with inability to find a writeable “temp” folder. That’s because Win 11 has turned on “Folder Protection”. Turning it off exposes my system to viruses. Also, Certbot uses a Python script, so there is no way to run Certbot without allowing all python scripts (because it is the interpreter that gets trapped) which also exposes me tor viruses (same for ANY interpreted solution). Currently, I manually turn off protection, run Certbot, turn on protection. My website is non-commercial, so I am looking for a free replacement for Certbot that uses a non-scripted ACME interface. I have not found any place in the CTW documentation that specifies that CTW does not use a script for accessing files. Does it?
Certify is a .net based UI and background service. For your purposes there is no scripting involved (although it can be used). For your scenario I would:
- install Certify The Web and setup a new managed certificate for your website.
- Add a “Deploy to Apache” Task in order to convert the certificate into the required files for Apache, you can simply have these write out to a folder that apache can see (and the users Apache runs as can access).
- Add a Stop/Start Service task to restart Apache when your cert renews.
- Now when your certificate renews it will update the files used by Apache and restart Apache as required.
Our Community Edition is free and can manage up to 10 different managed certificates, each managed certificate can cover up to 100 domains.