What you need to know about reissuing an SSL Certificate
Over the course of your SSL certificate's lifespan, it may be necessary for you to reissue it at some point. This can happen for a number of reasons:
- Your private key has been compromised
- You are adding/removing SAN's
- Industry updates
- Changing hashing algorithms
- Moving servers
The good news is that, outside of time, it probably won't cost you anything—most SSL certificates come with unlimited free reissuances for their entire lifespan.
In order to reissue an SSL certificate you must either locate the original CSR saved on your server or make a new one (recommended), log into your control panel and re-submit it to the Certificate Authority (CA). Some certificates may require you to re-complete a step of the validation process as well. Not the whole thing, usually just another domain confirmation email or another telephone call—nothing too complicated.
After you have the re-issued certificate you'll need to go through the process of installing it again. This can be a bit time consuming but you should have some experience given that you've done this at least once before. Simply install the re-issued certificate and you're good to go.
