Request for helping to resolve the issue of website inaccessibility due to SSL certificate expiration

Developer help
1

  • URL
    (removed)

  • Ghost version
    5.87.1

  • How was Ghost installed and configured?
    Installed following the official tutorial of Ghost: How to install & setup Ghost on Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04

  • What Node version, database, OS & browser are you using?
    Nginx 1.18.0
    Node.js v18.20.4
    MySQL 8.0.37
    Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS
    Chrome Desktop Web Browser versoin 126.0.6478.127

  • What errors or information do you see in the console?
    I would like to request for helping to resolve the issue of website inaccessibility due to SSL certificate expiration. I can’t access the website because the certificate of website domain has been expired two days ago. Is anyone can help solving this problem?

  • What steps could someone else take to reproduce the issue you’re having?
    I’ve been running several Ghost website as a self-hosted server since 2018, but I’m running into a problem I’ve never experienced before. I don’t even know why the certificate expired.

2

What’s proxying for Ghost? Sometimes the proxy can interfere with those renewals.

You’ll want to inspect your server’s logs for attempts by LetsEncrypt to renew the certificate - there may be a hint there for why it’s failing.

1 Like
3

Hi Cathy_Sarisky,

Thank you for your reply.

After struggling for several hours, I finally I solved the problem with Certbot to renew the SSL certificate manually.

For the proxying for Ghost, I am using the Nginx web server.

Taking note of what you said, I checked the server logs and found some hints as to why the failure occurred. In my case, it was due to expiration rather than renewal.

Thank you for your message and will write the problem solving log soon.

Cheers,

4

Hi guys,

I solved the problem with Certbot to renew the SSL certificate manually.

I would like to sharing for somebody who would have a problem similar to my case.

Looking back, I think I should have asked the question below:
Duto an expired SSL certificate, I cannot access to a website built with Ghost. What should I do to install a valid SSL certificate via Ghost-CLI on a server with an expired SSL certificate?

< Expired Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate problem solving process >

I input the command as below in the Ubuntu server:

ghost stop
sudo apt install certbot
sudo certbot certificates
sudo systemctl restart nginx
ghost start

Now, the website can access well without having to worry about the existing configuration of Ghost, Nginx, MySQL, etc.

Thank you for Let’s Encrypt team and Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) always.

Cheers,