SSL Secure Server

I am the webmaster for a nonprofit organization in Sacramento. We currently use paypal to accept donation to our organization online. We are in the process of moving over to our own merchant account and will be processing donations at first through the merchant accounts ssl and later(although hopefully sooner) directly through our website. So I'm moving forward on setting up our ssl on dreamhost.

I've been learning and reading all the documentation on how to set up the ssl on dreamhost and have one question in particular that I can't find the answer to.

when I set up the ssl on one of my domains should I set it up on my main domain. we currently use http://www.sacloaves.org if I set up the ssl on that domain would I access the ssl page through https://www.sacloaves.org and would the non ssl page still be accessible through http://www.sacloaves.org or should I set up the ssl on a subdomain like secure.sacloaves.org?

Thanks so much for any help.

Justin

Your assumptions on accessing the secure and non-secure sites are correct. And the difference here is entirely preference. Some people like separating their secure area onto a sub-domain, which would make it easier to host someplace else. Normally people just put the SSL cert onto their main domain and then just integrate the shopping cart into their site, or put it behind the site like http://yourdomain.com/store

Either is fine, both are acceptable. It's just what you like better and how your site is designed. Perhaps you can talk with your web designer to see what they suggest?

- Greg
- DreamHost Technical Support

Thanks for the help.

I went ahead and set up my SSL cert on my main domain and it works like a charm. Now any part of my site that I want to have SSL I simply link to it as https. Thanks again.