I got a free ssl certificate from my domain registry and installed it on nginx. How does the renewal work?

Question

I got a free ssl certificate from porkbun which is my domain registry. I then followed the steps stated from this website on how to install those certificates on nginx: https://wbxpress.net/install-porkbun-ssl-nginx-wordpress/

It has the following files:

domain.cert.pem
intermediate.cert.pem
private.key.pem
public.key.pem

It works but what will be the renewal process here, do I need to download the certificate again from porkbun and then upload it to my server after those certificates expire.

Am I better off obtaining certificates on my own and then using certbot to renew it automatically? I have done this before but I just followed steps from this article (https://medium.com/@pentacent/nginx-and-lets-encrypt-with-docker-in-less-than-5-minutes-b4b8a60d3a71) so I'm not really aware of how the renewal works.

What would be the easiest way here? :D

Answer 1

If you are only using Porkbun, then yes, you will need to download the certificates and upload when they expire. It seems to only automatically install if you're hosting with them, according to the docs.

Every Porkbun account comes with a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate that will renew automatically if you're using Porkbun as your DNS provider. Better yet, if you're using Porkbun's hosting package or site builder, you don't have to do anything at all to add SSL security: the sites will install automatically.

The tutorial you linked automatically does these steps for you directly with Let's Encrypt. You could alter the service that handles renewal to obtain the cert from Porkbun instead.

The easiest solution is probably the way you already know, unless you'd like to host your site on Porkbun as well.