How to Install an SSL Certificate on Media Temple Grid

This guide shows you how to install an SSL certificate on Media Temple Grid hosting, and what to do now that the Media Temple brand has been retired by GoDaddy. If you are looking after a site that was once on the Media Temple Grid, the actual install today happens inside the GoDaddy control panel (most former Grid sites land on a GoDaddy Web Hosting (cPanel) plan). The historical Grid Account Center steps are preserved further down for anyone still maintaining a legacy reference.

Important product note: on December 5, 2022, GoDaddy announced it was retiring the Media Temple brand. Starting February 2023, all Media Temple accounts and services (including Grid, DV, and managed WordPress) were migrated into GoDaddy, and the standalone Media Temple Grid product is no longer sold or provisioned. GoDaddy continues to host former Media Temple customers on its own platforms. See Is Media Temple Grid still supported? below for the migration path and where to install your certificate today.

Generate a CSR code on Media Temple Grid (or its GoDaddy successor)

If you have already generated the CSR code and received your SSL certificate files from the CA, skip ahead to the installation section.

A CSR (Certificate Signing Request) is a block of encoded text that holds your contact details and the domain you want to secure. The CA validates the CSR and issues the certificate. When the CSR is created, the matching private key is generated at the same time and is required during installation. You have two options:

• Use our CSR Generator to create the CSR and private key in your browser. This is the practical choice for former Grid users, because the original Grid CSR wizard inside the Account Center is no longer available after the GoDaddy migration.
• If your site has moved to a GoDaddy Web Hosting (cPanel) plan, you can also generate the CSR inside cPanel under Security > SSL/TLS > Generate, view, or delete SSL certificate signing requests. The private key stays on the server.

Save the CSR and the private key as plain text, including the BEGIN and END lines, and keep the private key in a safe place. You cannot install or reissue the certificate without it. Submit the CSR to your CA during the order. After the CA validates the request and issues your certificate, continue with the installation below.

Install an SSL certificate (current GoDaddy path for former Grid sites)

Since the Grid Account Center is gone, the supported install path today is the GoDaddy hosting control panel that now hosts your site. For the vast majority of migrated Grid sites this is GoDaddy Web Hosting (cPanel). The exact dashboard varies a little if you ended up on Managed WordPress or VPS, but the cPanel flow below covers the typical case.

Before you begin, extract the ZIP file the CA sent you. You should have three pieces ready as plain text, each including the BEGIN and END lines:

• Your primary server certificate (the .crt file named after your domain).
• The CA bundle (one or more intermediate certificates, sometimes named ca-bundle).
• Your private key, the one you saved when you generated the CSR.

Step 1: Open the GoDaddy hosting dashboard and launch cPanel

• Sign in at godaddy.com with the GoDaddy credentials your Media Temple account was migrated under (GoDaddy sent the account-takeover details by email during the migration).
• Open My Products, find the Web Hosting plan that hosts your domain, and click Manage.
• From the hosting dashboard, click cPanel Admin to open cPanel for that account.

Step 2: Upload the certificate and private key

• In cPanel, go to the Security section and click SSL/TLS.
• Under Certificates (CRT), click Generate, view, upload, or delete SSL certificates.
• In Upload a New Certificate, either select the .crt file from your computer, or paste the entire contents of the certificate (including the BEGIN CERTIFICATE and END CERTIFICATE lines) into the text box, then click Save Certificate.
• Go back to SSL/TLS and click Generate, view, upload, or delete your private keys. Paste the matching private key (with BEGIN PRIVATE KEY and END PRIVATE KEY lines) and click Save. Skip this step if the CSR was generated inside this cPanel, since the key is already there.

Step 3: Install the certificate on the domain

• Return to SSL/TLS and click Manage SSL sites under Install and Manage SSL for your site (HTTPS).
• In Install an SSL Website, pick the domain from the Domain dropdown, then click Autofill by Domain. cPanel pulls in the certificate and key you just uploaded.
• Paste the CA bundle into the Certificate Authority Bundle (CABUNDLE) box if it has not been filled in automatically. If the CA sent multiple intermediate certificates, paste them one after another in the same box.
• Click Install Certificate. A confirmation message appears when the install succeeds. cPanel applies the certificate immediately, so you do not need to restart anything.

Once installed, open your site with https:// and confirm the padlock shows. If the site was previously serving plain HTTP, set up a permanent HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect in cPanel under Domains > Force HTTPS Redirect, or with a .htaccess rule.

Historical reference: the original Media Temple Grid Account Center steps

The original Media Temple Grid Account Center is no longer active for new logins, but the steps are kept here for any internal documentation or legacy reference. They will not work against a live account anymore.

• Sign in to the Media Temple Grid Account Center.
• Click Domains and select the domain you want to secure. To secure an alternate domain on the same Grid container, open Alternate Domain Admin first.
• Scroll to Add-Ons and click SSL Certificates.
• Next to Certificate, click Import Certificate.
• Paste each file into the matching box, including the BEGIN and END lines:
  • Key: the private key that matches your CSR. Leave blank only if the CSR was generated inside the Grid container itself.
  • Certificate: your primary server certificate.
  • CA / Chain Certificate: the intermediate certificate (or all intermediates concatenated one after another).
• Click Save. The Grid usually took up to 24 hours to activate a freshly installed certificate on the live site.

If you log in today and the Grid Account Center is unavailable or your dashboard now shows GoDaddy branding, your hosting has already been migrated. Use the GoDaddy cPanel steps further up instead.

Test your SSL installation

After the install, open your site over https:// and check that the padlock shows without warnings. Then run a deeper scan against your hostname to confirm the certificate is served correctly and the chain is complete, which is the most common cause of trust errors. Use our SSL Checker for an instant report on the certificate, the full chain, and TLS protocol support.

Is Media Temple Grid still supported?

No. GoDaddy acquired Media Temple in October 2013, and on December 5, 2022 it announced that the Media Temple brand would be retired. Starting in February 2023, all Media Temple accounts (including the Grid shared-hosting product) were migrated into GoDaddy. The mediatemple.net Account Center is no longer available for new sign-ups or new Grid containers, and the Grid is not sold as a standalone product anymore.

If you owned a Grid plan, your sites should now sit inside your GoDaddy account, typically on a Web Hosting (cPanel) plan that mirrors the original Grid features. For new sites that would previously have gone on the Grid, GoDaddy’s equivalents are:

• GoDaddy Web Hosting (cPanel) for general shared hosting. Certificate installs happen in cPanel under Security > SSL/TLS, exactly as described above.
• GoDaddy Managed WordPress if your Grid hosted WordPress sites. Managed WordPress on GoDaddy ships with an SSL by default, and custom certificates are added from the site dashboard rather than via cPanel.
• GoDaddy VPS if your site needed root-level Grid or DV-Server-class isolation. You install the certificate inside the server’s own control panel or directly in your web server config (Apache or NGINX).

The certificate steps above are still valid: you are installing a standard PEM certificate and private key into cPanel, which is what former Grid users land on after the migration.

Frequently Asked Questions