In part three of my series on setting up SSL on IIS 6, I'll describe the steps that are necessary to install an SSL certificate. Simply out of convenience I broke this process into two sections:

• Installing Your Certificate (Required)
• Verifying Your Certificate (Optional)

Installing Your Certificate

1. Bring up the properties for a website:

   

2. Switch to the "Directory Security" tab and click "Server Certificate:"

   

3. Click "Next" to bypass the first page:

   

4. Choose to process the request and click "Next":

   

5. Click "Browse" to the locate your certificate request:

   

6. Browse to the location of your certificate, highlight it, and click "Open":

   

7. Verify the location of your certificate and click "Next":

   

8. Choose your SSL port and click "Next":

   

9. Review the information to make sure it is correct and click "Next":

   

10. Click "Finish" to close the wizard:

    

11. Notice that you now have all the buttons available for SSL.

    

Verifying Your Certificate

1. Click the "View Certificate" button:

   

2. On the "General" tab, if the certificate is good you will see a normal certificate icon. (If no, you will see a warning or error icon.)

   

3. On the "Certification Path" tab you will see your certificate hierarchy:

   

That wraps it up for creating, submitting, obtaining, and installing a certificate. In subsequent blogs I'll post some appendices with instructions about setting up Certificate Services on Windows Server 2003.