The Domain Validation (DV) SSL certificate is the most affordable choice for increasing the security of your blog, personal or small business website. Since there is no required paperwork, the process of acquiring the Domain Validation certificate is very quick and easy: you will have to prove that you are the domain owner just by responding to an automatic e-mail message. After a couple of minutes, you will receive the issued SSL certificate which can be installed immediately. Sites with Domain Validation certification can be identified by the green padlock that is displayed by most web browsers.

This type of SSL certificates is recommended to be used if you need to prove that your site is secured, by having a secured connection. The Domain Validation certificates don’t display the legal entity, as the identity of the website owner is not checked while issuing them. So, if you have an e-commerce website or a site that collects users’ personal data, you should consider buying our Business Validation (BV) or Extended Validation (EV) certificates, which will make your site more trustworthy.

When requesting an SSL Certificate you have to prove that you own or you have management rights over the domain or sub-domain that you are requesting an SSL Certificate for.

Domain validation by email

If you have an SSL Certificate issued by Comodo, GeoTrust, Thawte, Symantec and RapidSSL, then you can complete the domain validation is by responding to an automated domain validation message sent to your email address. You will be given a list of emails to choose from, and the automated domain validation message will be sent to the email address that you choose.

Always check your email address (including your Spam folder) so as you should receive an email message from the Certificate Authority with instructions on how to validate (prove the ownership of) your domain name. The email message will ask you to copy a unique code and paste it on a specific link provided in the same email message.

If your SSL Certificate is issued by Comodo, there are 2 more ways how you can complete the domain validation:

Domain validation via the HTTP / HTTPS method

The HTTP validation consists of uploading a TXT validation file to a pre-defined location on your website. You have to make sure that you can access this file and link from any web browser. Once you proceed with this domain validation method, Comodo will run a scan of your website and will look particularly for this file at the given link. Your SSL Certificate will pass the domain validation within a few minutes after Comodo’s system finds the TXT file on your website.

The HTTPS validation method is the same validation method as described above. You should choose the HTTPS option if you already have an SSL Certificate installed on your website.

Domain validation via the DNS method

Comodo allows you to to add a pre-defined domain record to your domain registrar (the website where you registered your domain name). Make sure that your firewall doesn’t block Comodo validation robot. Comodo validation robot comes from secure.comodo.net / 91.199.212.132. The user agent should be “Comodo DCV” or “COMODO DCV”.

Please note that newly added DNS records take between 10-48 minutes to propagate. This means that you will have to wait up to 48 hours to pass the domain validation if you go with this method. That is why we recommend the Email, HTTP, and HTTPS methods better, so as they would allow you to pass the domain validation instantly.

How to change the domain validation method?

If you chose one of these domain validation methods described above, and you see that your domain doesn’t get validated, then you can always change your domain validation method. Please go to this link to learn how to do that.

In order to buy a Domain Validated certificate you do not need to provide any documentation. You will have to confirm the domain ownership through a simple email or file-based authentication. Following completion of one of these elements the DV certificate will be signed and released to you.

There are dozens of different ways to install an SSL Certificate, and they all depend on what SSL Certificate brand you have, the type of web server that you have, the operating system on your server, or the web hosting administration panel that you have installed on your server.

Here are links to documentation on how to install your SSL Certificate on your server, based on the SSL Certificate brand that you have:
– Comodo
– Thawte
– GeoTrust
– RapidSSL
– Symantec

We always recommend you to get specialized help with you SSL Certificate installation. If you have a web developer, or a system engineer, then they would be the right people to help you with your SSL Certificate installation.

If you want us to do the SSL Certificate installation for you, then we can definitely do that. We offer SSL Certificate installation services to our customers for a flat rate of $49.99 per domain per server.