A CSR (Certificate Signing Request) is a block of encoded text that contains your domain and organisation details. It is created together with a private key, which stays on your server.
Steps
- Log in to cPanel from the Client Area (Services → your hosting → Log in to cPanel).
- Open Security → SSL/TLS.
- Under Certificate Signing Requests (CSR), click Generate, view, or delete SSL certificate signing requests.
- For Key, select Generate a new 2,048-bit key (RSA 2048 is recommended).
- In Domains, enter your domain:
- Single domain:
example.com(www is included automatically by most certificates) - Wildcard:
*.example.com
- Single domain:
- Fill in City, State, Country (IN), Company and Email. For OV/EV certificates the company name must exactly match your registration documents.
- Click Generate.
- Copy the entire CSR including the lines
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----and-----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----. - Paste it into the SSL configuration page (see How to Order and Activate Your SSL Certificate).
Important: Do not delete the private key that cPanel created – it is required to install the certificate. Never share your private key with anyone.
Generating a CSR on other servers
On a Linux server with OpenSSL, run:
openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout example.com.key -out example.com.csr
Enter your details when prompted (Common Name = your domain). Keep example.com.key safe and submit the contents of example.com.csr.
