Set up HTTPS (TLS) for a NearlyFreeSpeech.NET website

Any responsible site that accepts passwords, form responses, or other user data must use HTTPS.

If you’re hosting your site with NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, it is very easy to set up a TLS cert and HTTPS. Here’s how:

  1. Connect to your website via a SSH client like PuTTY.
  2. Run the command tls-setup.sh
  3. Accept the Let’s Encrypt Subscriber Agreement by entering “y”
  4. Wait while the script sets up the TLS cert and HTTPS

That’s it!

(Please note that other hosts will not have the tls-setup.sh script. These steps will only work on sites hosted with NFS.NET)

2 thoughts on “Set up HTTPS (TLS) for a NearlyFreeSpeech.NET website”

  1. My tls-setup.sh is failing with
    completed at 2020-12-05 10:00:31 UTC after 3 seconds and produced the
    following output:

    ERROR: Problem connecting to server (get for
    https%3A%2F%2Facme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org%2Fdirectory&data=04%7C01%7Cdudleyl%40queensu.ca%7Ccc63a6257eca45aedcee08d899049d7c%7Cd61ecb3b38b142d582c4efb2838b925c%7C1%7C1%7C637427592399620933%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=Smzy8vL7oqCNDfwmwM8%2Fe8e820VkP23FPmcV7uMSRIE%3D&reserved=0; curl returned with 35)
    /usr/local/bin/tls-setup.sh exited with return code 1

    Can you tell me what the problem is and suggest possible solution(s) ?

    1. My initial thought was a problem connecting to the letsencrypt.org server. But NFS.net shouldn’t be blocking your server’s access to Let’s Encrypt. Perhaps it could be a temporary network issue that wouldn’t happen again if you try running tls-setup.sh again

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