What is a CSR?
A CSR or Certificate Signing request is a block of encrypted text that is generated on the server that the certificate will be used on. It contains information that will be included in your certificate such as your organization name, common name (domain name), locality, and country. It also contains the public key that will be included in your certificate. A private key is usually created at the same time that you create the CSR.
In order to obtain a Digital Certificate, your hosting company must generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) from their web server. If you host your own web site then you will have to get your Web Master or IT Manager to arrange this for you. A Certificate Signing Request (CSR) is an encrypted file that contains information about the organisation which hosts your website. Typically, it contains the organisation’s public key, name, locality, country, state, and URL or Common Name. The web server software is used to generate a CSR, and in the process creates two files: a private key, and a CSR. It is important that you are very precise about The Common Name. According to VeriSign’s website “it is typically composed of Host + Domain Name and will look like “www.company.com” or “company.com”… The Common Name must be the same as the Web address you will be accessing when connecting to a secure site. For example, a Digital Certificate for a site named “www.domain.com” or “secure.domain
