The introduction of the LetsEncrypt free SSL certificate service has made making your site SSL only a much easier process than ever before. They've made it even easier by allowing automation around certificate setup and renewal. In this post to his site Niklas Keller shows you how to use a PHP implementation of a tool to setup/refresh your certificates automatically.

Let’s Encrypt, the free and automated CA, started late last year into their public beta. They offer a pretty comprehensive client to automate the process of getting SSL clients and installing them. It will soon be moved to a new home at EFF.

If you’re already using PHP and don’t need / want the automatic installation of your free certificates or don’t want to install Python, here’s a client for you. kelunik/acme-client is able to issue and renew certificates using your already running webserver (e.g. Nginx or Apache). It’s using the http-01 challenge to prove your domain ownership / control to Let’s Encrypt.

He shows how to use the client to set up a new LetsEncrypt account (if you don't already have one) and issue a certificate through a few command line calls. He then shows how to automate the process to check your certificate expiration and load the updated certificates. He also includes an example of the command to revoke a certificate, just in case.