multiple portals, multiple sites, and ssl

First I want to thank you for this site.  I have learned much and solved many problems in the past from browsingf hte information here and I appreciate the work it takes to keep a useful forum running.

That being said, i want to paint a picture of what I have and perhaps get a solution to my problem.

I host 7 dnn sites under one domain, and 1 site under a different domain.  Sites 1 through 7 are variious versions of dnn raaging up to dnn 4.5.5.  They are configured as https://domainname1/companyname1 through https://domainname1/companyname7.  The sites are used by social service agencies to collect and keep track of clients.  There is an ssl certificate installed for this site for domainname1 on the default ssl port in IIS..

The 8th site is http://www.domainname2.com and this site is a commercial and public site and I only need ot secure the shopping cart.  It has it's own ssl certifiace on an alternate port.  When I try to secure the shoppingcart on this site, the browser throughs an exception stating that the certificate is not for the domain.  As you probably guessed, DNN is trying to offer the ssl certificate on the default port, which is not the correct certififcate. 

If I switch site 8 to use the default ssl prot then i can secure the shoopping cart, but the 400 users of domain1 sites get the certificate error as their sites are now offering the domainname2 certificate.

Woudl a simple javascript redirect work in my case, and if so how would I differnetiate between the 7 differnet sites on the redirect.  Is there a hack that I could apply to DNN to allow it to recognize non-default ssl ports?

Is there a better way to set up the sites to make ssl and multiple dnn sites coexists in harmony?

Any help is appreciated.

john mott

Hi John,

I apologize for the delay in responding. I've been a little busy lately working on a new version of one of my modules.

If I read this right, you have discovered that SSL on an alternate port is not the best way to apply a certificate.

You could technically redirect to the non-default port, but that is a messy way to do it and prone to errors. What you end up doing is redirecting to the specific port by putting the port number on the Url --> https://secure.domain.com:499/

You may want to either look into getting a wildcard certificate (they have some now that even allow different domain names), or setup your sites so that all of them that need SSL have their own IP address.  I use unique IP addresses for SSL sites, and give them their own IIS site and DNN install.  If you are trying to host multiple sites that require SSL on one instance of DNN then I think you are asking for trouble, because all their data would be in the same DB, one site goes down, they all go down, etc..