When running a shared server of VPS housing multiple accounts, many hosting companies and resellers have found it beneficial to install a shared SSL on the server. A shared SSL is a regular SSL certificate that is set up be accessible by multiple cPanel accounts on the same machine.

A shared SSL is in the format of https://sslhostname.com/~username . First, you will need to determine what the name of your shared SSL host will be. For this example I will use secure.myserver.com.

1. If you don’t have one already, create a cPanel account for secure.myserver.com. If you already have an SSL certificate installed on your main server’s IP, you will need to assign this account a dedicated IP. It’s generally a good idea to disallow CGI and SSH access to your shared SSL user.

2. Generate your CSR and certificate as you would for any other SSL cert, then install it through WebHost manager under Install a SSL Certificate and Setup the Domain.

3. Next, you need to disable open_basedir and userdir protection for this account if it is enabled (in other words, the boxes for this user should be checked). For cPanel 10 servers, these options will be under Tweak Security in WHM. For cPanel 11, look for Security Center.

4. Once these settings are in place, your shared SSL should work when accessed through https://sslhostname.com/~username/path/to/files

You can also use the shared certificate as your main host cert.  For cPanel 11, you can use the Manage Service Certificate function to install your shared SSL on various services.