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PrintShop Web Installation Guide | 41
HTTP over SSL (HTTPS)
HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer, or HTTP over SSL) is a Web protocol
used to encrypt and decrypt user page requests as well as the pages that are returned by the Web
server.
SSL is an open, non proprietary protocol that Netscape has proposed as a standard to the World Wide
Consortium (W3C). HTTPS is not to be confused with S-HTTP, a security-enhanced version of HTTP
developed and proposed as a standard by EIT.
When you visit a web site with a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that starts with https:// your
browser's HTTPS layer will encrypt information send from the client to the server. The acknowledgment
you receive from the server will also travel in encrypted form, arrive with an https:// URL, and be
decrypted for you by your browser's HTTPS sublayer.
HTTPS and SSL support the use of X.509 digital certificates from the server so that a user can
authenticate the sender.
PrintShop Web and HTTPS
The PrintShop Web installer gives you the option to support both HTTP and HTTPS connections. If you
do not install HTTPS during the installation you can enable it afterwards.
When you enable HTTPS you have to obtain a ssl certificate from a certificate authority like Verisign
(http://www.verisign.com), this certificate and the private key must be placed in /apache/certificate.
PSW comes with a sample certificate, which will work on PrintShop Web servers that can be reached
through the URL https://localhost. For any other URL the supplied certificate will generate security
warnings when an user connects to the PrintShop Web server.
Most certificate authorities have detailled information on their web site on how to obtain, create and
install certificates. The following steps will help you generating a Certificate Signing Request (CSR)
and need to be performed on the PSW server.
1 Download and install Openssl. Openssl can be found at the following location: http://
www.slproweb.com/
2 Navigate to the OpenSSL folder and launch the OpenSSL.exe located in the bin folder
3 Enter the following command to generate a private key:
openssl genrsa -out yourdomainname.key 1024
The example above generates a genrsa encrypted key. These settings may differ between
certificate providers.
4 Enter the following to create the CSR:
openssl req -new -key yourdomainname.key -out yourdomainname.xsr