Free Wildcard SSL Certificate for Nextcloud and WordPress

In this tutorial, I will show you how to manually install a free wildcard SSL certificate using Let’s Encrypts Certbot for Nextcloud (both snap and non-snap instance) and WordPress on your Ubuntu 18.04 server.

An SSL certificate encrypts all communication between the users of your website and your server, which assures the integrity of the information being sent from the user to the server and vice versa. Furthermore, Google Chrome will flag any website which is not serving a valid SSL certificate as not-secure. The installation of an SSL certificate is therefore beneficial for both security and to improve your Google ranking. While traditionally an SSL certificate is only valid for the exact domain it was issued for, a wildcard SSL certificate allows you to secure all subdomains (e.g. blog.yourdomain.com as well as yourdomain.com) belonging to the parent domain name. This is beneficial, as that way you only ever have to maintain one SSL certificate.

Prerequisites

• Web server with SSH access (preferably Ubuntu 18.04)
• Apache set up as reverse proxy (refer to reverse-proxy-tutorial)
• Nextcloud installed either through snap or standalone
• WordPress installed and running under /home/httpd/vhosts/oberlandwetter.ch/httpdocs/Techguides

1. Install certbot

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache

2. Obtain a free wildcard SSL certificate

Generate a wildcard SSL certificate with certbot for your domain (e.g. 「yourdomain.com」)

sudo certbot certonly --manual -d *.yourdomain.com -d yourdomain.com --agree-tos --no-bootstrap --manual-public-ip-logging-ok --preferred-challenges dns-01 --server https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory

This will respond with

Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Plugins selected: Authenticator manual, Installer None
Obtaining a new certificate
Performing the following challenges:
dns-01 challenge for yourdomain.com
dns-01 challenge for yourdomain.com

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Please deploy a DNS TXT record under the name
_acme-challenge.yourdomain.com with the following value:

GtieeB0m32HvwVMalGd6eBkgt0HoaVb_hx3Cq3Mpz4k

Before continuing, verify the record is deployed.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Press Enter to Continue

Press enter

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Please deploy a DNS TXT record under the name
_acme-challenge.yourdomain.com with the following value:

POtZIO-DW2CZufOV5mNiOsJDGlIBbtqnPaZ7iMricDM

Before continuing, verify the record is deployed.
(This must be set up in addition to the previous challenges; do not remove,
replace, or undo the previous challenge tasks yet. Note that you might be
asked to create multiple distinct TXT records with the same name. This is
permitted by DNS standards.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Press Enter to Continue

Only press enter after finishing step 3!

3. Set DNS TXT records

Next, log into your domain administration and add the challange values as DNS TXT records. As host, set _acme-challenge.

Example for bought domain name from HostingerExample for free domain name from ClouDNS

Now test if your changes have already propagated to the DNS servers by searching for _acme-challenge.yourdomain.com on https://dnslookup.online/txt.html

4. Apache SSL configuration

The default-ssl.conf file is used to specify the SSL certificate that should be used. Add the following block the this file between the <IfModule mod_ssl.c></IfModule mod_ssl.c> directives. Note that in the example, the directory /var/www/html/ will now be served when somebody browses to yourdomain.com.

<VirtualHost *:443>
        ServerName yourdomain.com
        SSLEngine On
        SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/cert.pem
        SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/privkey.pem
        DocumentRoot /var/www/html/
        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Next, enable the default-ssl.conf configuration file as well as the SSL and rewrite module. Finally restart the apache service.

sudo a2ensite default-ssl.conf
sudo a2enmod ssl
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo service apache2 restart

5a) Nextcloud Apache configuration

If you are running a regular nextcloud server instance and want to make it available under a subdomain, e.g. cloud.mydomain.com, you can simply add another virtual host entry to the default-ssl configuration file.

<VirtualHost *:443>
        ServerName cloud.yourdomain.com
        SSLEngine On
        SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/cert.pem
        SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/privkey.pem
        DocumentRoot /var/www/html/nextcloud
        <Directory /var/www/html/nextcloud/>
                Options +FollowSymlinks
                AllowOverride All
                <IfModule mod_dav.c>
                        Dav off
                </IfModule>
                SetEnv HOME /var/www/html/nextcloud
                SetEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/html/nextcloud

                RewriteEngine On
                RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/carddav https://%{SERVER_NAME}/remote.php/dav/ [R=301,L]
                RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/caldav https://%{SERVER_NAME}/remote.php/dav/ [R=301,L]
                RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/host-meta https://%{SERVER_NAME}/public.php?service=host-meta [QSA,L]
                RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/host-meta\.json https://%{SERVER_NAME}/public.php?service=host-meta-json [QSA,L]
                RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/webfinger https://%{SERVER_NAME}/public.php?service=webfinger [QSA,L]

        </Directory>

        <IfModule mod_headers.c>
                Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15552000; includeSubDomains"
        </IfModule>

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Make sure that the path specified as DocumentRoot actually points to your nextcloud installation directory.

5b) Nextcloud snap reverse proxy configuration

If you are running nextcloud as a snap instance and you want to run nextcloud as a subdomain, then you first need to change the default ports to e.g. 81 for http and 444 for https.

sudo snap set nextcloud ports.http=81 ports.https=444

Next, copy your certificates to the nextcloud snap directory (such that the snap can read them).

sudo cp /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/cert.pem /var/snap/nextcloud/current/cert.pem
sudo cp /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/chain.pem /var/snap/nextcloud/current/chain.pem
sudo cp /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/privkey.pem /var/snap/nextcloud/current/key.pem

Make sure to rename the privkey.pem to key.pem

Now change directories to the current nextcloud directory and install the custom SSL certificate.

cd /var/snap/nextcloud/current/
sudo nextcloud.enable-https custom -s cert.pem key.pem chain.pem 

Next, set up a virtual host for your nextcloud snap instance.

<VirtualHost *:443>
        ServerName cloud.yourdomain.com

        SSLEngine On
        SSLProxyEngine on
        SSLProxyVerify none
        SSLProxyCheckPeerCN off
        SSLProxyCheckPeerName off
        ProxyPreserveHost On
        ProxyRequests Off
        SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/cert.pem
        SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/privkey.pem

        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/carddav https://%{SERVER_NAME}/remote.php/dav/ [R=301,L]
        RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/caldav https://%{SERVER_NAME}/remote.php/dav/ [R=301,L]
        RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/host-meta https://%{SERVER_NAME}/public.php?service=host-meta [QSA,L]
        RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/host-meta\.json https://%{SERVER_NAME}/public.php?service=host-meta-json [QSA,L]
        RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/webfinger https://%{SERVER_NAME}/public.php?service=webfinger [QSA,L]

        ProxyPass / https://192.168.1.1:444/
        ProxyPassReverse / https://192.168.1.1:444/
        
        RequestHeader set X-Forwarded-Port "443"
        RequestHeader set X-Forwarded-Proto "https"

</VirtualHost>

Finally, add your local IP address as ‘trusted_proxies’ and make sure that the ‘overwrite.cli.url’ is set to your encrypted subdomain in the nextcloud snap configuration.

<?php
$CONFIG = array (
...
  'overwrite.cli.url' => 'https://cloud.yourdomain.com',
  'trusted_proxies' =>
  array (
    0 => '192.168.1.1',
  ),
);

6. WordPress Apache configuration

Assuming that you are running a wordpress blog under 「blog.mydomain.com」, this would be the required Apache configuration.

<VirtualHost *:443>
        ServerName blog.yourdomain.com
        DocumentRoot /home/httpd/vhosts/oberlandwetter.ch/httpdocs/Techguides
        SSLEngine On
        SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/cert.pem
        SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/privkey.pem

        <Directory /home/httpd/vhosts/oberlandwetter.ch/httpdocs/Techguides/>
                AllowOverride All
                Require all granted
                RewriteEngine On
        </Directory>
        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

7. Force secure connections

If you want to ensure that only secure connections are established to your server, you can specify a rewrite rule in the default Apache configuration file.

<VirtualHost *:80>
        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
        RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}
</VirtualHost>