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Kyte Shipyard now supports creating SSL certificates for your apps

Read Time 4 mins | Written by: Kenneth Hough

We are excited to announce that Kyte Shipyard™ now natively supports AWS Certificate Manager. With the new version of Kyte Shipyard™ you can request new SSL certificates for your apps. Watch the video below to learn how to request a new certificate and validate domain ownership, or follow the step-by-step tutorial under the video.

[VIDEO COMING SOON]

To request a new certificate fro AWS Certificate Manager through Kyte Shipyard™, you will need to navigate to the domain section of your site.

From the main page (after login), navigate to your application, then click on "Site" and select the site you wish to create a new SSL certificate for. From the "Site" page, select domain and click "Add Domain"

You will be asked to specify the primary domain, along with any Subject Alternative Names. For example, if your primary domain is example.com but you also need to secure www.example.com or use a wildcard, such as *.example.com, you can specify these alternative names in the Subject Alternative Names section.

ACM Certificate Domain Name and SANAfter submitting the form with the primary domain name, and any SANs, you'll see that the request has been created and the status is PENDING VALIDATION. Click on the domain to open up the detail page.

Domain Validation using CNAMEsHere, you will see CNAME records that need to be added to your DNS in order to validate your domain ownership so that AWS Certificate Manager can issue your SSL certificate. Copy each record to your DNS provider. In the example below we use Cloudflare.

Add DNS recordsOnce the records have been added, it may take anywhere from a few minutes to over 24 hours depending on your DNS provider. We enjoy using Cloudflare becuase of the rapid propagation of DNS record changes and many of their built-in security and performance features. You can check on your validation status by visiting the domain page in Kyte Shipyard™ or refreshing the domain detail page. Once validation has completed, you will see a greed status indicator with the words VALIDATED for each domain, and the word ISSUED for the overall status (as shown below).

Validated DNS recordsOnce an SSL certificate has been issued, it can be assigned to your site with a single click. You will no longer have to login to your AWS console and update the Cloudfront distribution. With Kyte Shipyard™, deploying and automatically scaling your apps in the AWS cloud is simply a click away.

In our next tutorial, we will go over assigning your new SSL certificate to your site and verifying that it works.

 

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Kenneth Hough

Background

I founded KeyQ in March of 2020 with the vision of helping businesses achieve the next level of success through delivering innovative and meaningful cloud solutions. Since its inception, I have worked with several businesses, non-profit organizations, and universities to design and build cloud applications that have helped streamline their business processes and reduce costs.

Prior to KeyQ, I was a medical researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine. UAB is also where I worked on my doctoral thesis under the mentorship of Dr. Jessy Deshane and Dr. Victor Thannickal. During my doctoral work at UAB I was exposed to the “omics” and big data, which has influenced my career choice to develop data-driven analytics platforms in the cloud.

I also have to give a big shoutout to my undergraduate education at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), where I majored in biochemistry. WPI’s motto is “Lehr und Kunst,” which roughly translates to “Theory and Practice” or “Learning and Skilled Art.” WPI truly cherishes and upholds this pedagogy, which can be seen by the teaching styles and class sizes. The learning experience I had at WPI is unique and has shaped me to be who I am, being able to learn, practice and apply.

Personal Interests

I love to learn innovative technologies and try new things. I have a broad area of interests that include serverless architectures, machine learning, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, medical informatics, and financial technology. I am also working towards my CFA level 1 exam for 2021. Other interests and hobbies include traveling, rock climbing, rappelling, caving, camping and gardening!