I found the How to create DotNetNuke Portals (Parent and Child) tutorials to be most helpful. (Sorry I did not have them when we were first setting up our portals.)

However, what about augmenting the with a discussion of SSL? I have been struggling with SSL implementation and some things that would be helpful include the following:

Use Cases

1. ✓ Single site with separate DNN installation
2. Parent with multiple child portals sharing the parent SSL
3. Multiple sites (separate IIS, separate IP addresses, separate SSL certifications) with one DNN installation. (when SSL works on one site it does not work on another site)
4. Multiple sites (one IIS, one IP address, multiple names in host header value, one SSL certificate)

# ! is quite simple but the others seem to take some fancy footwork between IIS and DNN that we have not yet grasped.

Additionally, if you could show the use of the admin settings "SSL URL", and "Standard URL" using a separate certificate that would be ideal. Everyone says what they are for but there are no examples of the IIS/DNN settings that would be needed for these to  be used.

Again, Thanks for the work. This is the second year we have subscribed and you tutorials are a life saver.

Matthew [script removed]Submit

Matthew,

I'm not sure that this can be done with the "out of the box" version of DotNetNuke. I do know that there are third-party modules that help share logins and data across multiple portals in a single installation.

It's not log-ons or data I want to share. Only the encrypted (SSL) connections.

Sorry for my sloppy reading. That's exactly what you asked!

I haven't delved into SSL, so I don't know the answer. Hopefully, though, there is someone reading this who has.

I'll say up front that I am not an expert on this, but I have recently struggled through this a couple times and will share what I learned along the way.

On a 3rd party host, I was able to push and poke the host to eventually support two SSL certificates on the same DNN installation. It was not easy for them to do and they didn't want to do it. Now that I am changing to another host for unrelated reasons, I am choosing to set my two ecommerce websites up in separate DNN installations.

Here's why. My DNN application went through an DNN upgrade unsuccessfully. Something went wrong that went unnoticed for several weeks. The supporting files started going missing. You know, the PDF's and .JPG's needed on your site? Since several weeks went by, and sales were made during that time, I couldn't easily just restore a backup. I would lose the history of those sales. Even if I were willing to lose them on one ecommerce domain, I was not willing to do that on the other as well. What's worse, there were more portals on that server. The more sites I had, the more I stood to lose with a restore procedure. As a result, I have decided that it was much better to maintain several DNN installs than to lose them all at one time when something goes wrong. I hope that sharing my experience saves you and others the stress of rebuilding your portals if it ever happens to you.

New rule: a new DNN install for each ecommerce domain.

That said, here is what I know about SSL in the order you asked.

1. ✓ Single site with separate DNN installation
.......This is the regular way to do it. The host likes this way best.

2. Parent with multiple child portals sharing the parent SSL

.....There is a SSL Cert you can get that will secure all the child portals when it is applied to the parent portal. Can't remember what it's called, maybe "universal" or "Global", something like that.

3. Multiple sites (separate IIS, separate IP addresses, separate SSL certifications) with one DNN installation. (when SSL works on one site it does not work on another site)

.....One SSL certificate will only work with one domain name and one static IP.

.....You can have two or more static IP's pointing to the same DNN application if the host is willing to configure it. They will likely just say no - but it is possible. I've done it.


4. Multiple sites (one IIS, one IP address, multiple names in host header value, one SSL certificate)

I don't think so. Maybe someone else can make it work. My understanding is that the SSL cert is tied to the domain name. So if there is more than one domain, there must be more than one SSL Cert.


Good luck!

Thanks for the information!