🔐 Wildcard Certificate Setup with Let’s Encrypt

If you enabled enable_wildcard_certificate, follow these steps to manually request a wildcard certificate.

1️⃣ Run the Certbot Command 🖥️

certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges=dns --agree-tos \
--email administrator@DOMAIN_PRIMARY -d DOMAIN_PRIMARY -d "*.DOMAIN_PRIMARY"

2️⃣ Add DNS TXT Record for Validation 📜

Certbot will prompt you to add a DNS TXT record:

Please create a TXT record under the name:
_acme-challenge.DOMAIN_PRIMARY.

with the following value:
9oVizYIYVGlZ3VtWQIKRS5UghyXiqGoUNlCtIE7LiA

➡ Go to your DNS provider and create a new TXT record:

  • Host: _acme-challenge.DOMAIN_PRIMARY

  • Value: "9oVizYIYVGlZ3VtWQIKRS5UghyXiqGoUNlCtIE7LiA"

  • TTL: Set to 300 seconds (or lowest possible)

✅ Verify the DNS record before continuing:

dig TXT _acme-challenge.DOMAIN_PRIMARY @8.8.8.8

3️⃣ Complete the Certificate Request ✅

Once the DNS changes have propagated, press Enter in the Certbot terminal.
If successful, Certbot will save the certificates under:

/etc/letsencrypt/live/DOMAIN_PRIMARY/

  • fullchain.pem → The certificate

  • privkey.pem → The private key