The Private Key is a critical component of an SSL certificate and the certificate would not work without a valid, matching private key. In other words, each installed SSL certificate will have one matching private key and it requires that private key to work.
If you have accidentally deleted your certificate's private key, your next course of action depends on:
- Where did you purchase the SSL certificate?
- Do you have a backup copy of the private key?
SSL certificate purchased from Doteasy:
If your SSL certificate was purchased and installed by Doteasy, then simply contact us and we will help you re-key your SSL certificate. This means we will invalidate the old private key and generate a new private key. We will also need to re-install your SSL certificate so that it will be paired with the newly generated private key.
SSL certificate purchased from another provider; have backup copy of original private key:
If your SSL certificate was purchased from another provider and you have previously saved a copy of the private key, you can use the SSL/TLS Manager to add the private key back onto the SSL certificate.
- Click SSL/TLS under Security in cPanel.
- On the SSL/TLS Manager, select Manage SSL sites under Install and Manage SSL for your site (HTTPS).
- From the Managed Installed SSL Websites table, select the HTTPS website and click Update Certificate from the Actions column.
- Paste the original private key into the Private Key (KEY) textbox.
- When ready, click Install Certificate.
SSL certificate purchased from another provider; no backup copies of original private key:
If your SSL certificate was purchased from another provider and you do not have a backup copy of the original private key then you will need to contact the certificate authority (ie. the company/provider where you purchased the SSL certificate) for either a re-key or a re-issue. Because the private key and the CSR has to match, if you are given a new private key, you will need to upload the new private key to your Doteasy server and generate a new CSR. In other words, you will need to install the re-keyed/re-issue SSL certificate as a new SSL installation.