Domain Names and Certificates

So far, we only addressed the virtual servers with IP addresses. While they work perfectly well, it’s a bit hard to advertise our brand new application on 165.227.139.24. Instead, we should buy a domain name from a domain registrar and serve the application from an address that people can remember. By using DNS records, we can instruct the DNS servers to send the visitors of our new domain name to the correct IP address. Connecting the IP address with our new domain name is just part of the story, though. If we want to serve web content securely over HTTPS, we’ll have to provide a TLS certificate that validates the domain name and the virtual server’s ownership.

Table of Contents

Domains

DNS Records

Looking-up Records
Changing Records

HTTPS and Certificates

Implementing HTTPS

Security Options
Redirecting HTTP

Let's Encrypt Certificates

Renewals

Summary

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Gumroad (as of Aug 3, 2023)
I am using some scripts I downloaded from Josef Strzibny's book that are setting up Ruby on Rails deployment and automatically installing a PostgreSQL server. I am also using Dokku, but I like the idea of controlling what is happening on the server.
Lucian Ghinda, Senior Ruby Developer