Setup Let's Encrypt with Nginx

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When I migrated my VPS (with Ubuntu) to another host, I needed to set up Nginx again with Let's Encrypt, but I always forget exactly how to do it. This blog post describes in easy steps how to set up Nginx with auto-renewing Let's Encrypt SSL certificates.

Setting up Nginx

Setting up Nginx is super easy on Ubuntu. Run the following commands on your VPS.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx

If you have a firewall (ufw) enabled, run the following command to allow HTTP (80) and HTTPS (443) through the firewall.

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'

Installing Certbot

Certbot is also super easy. Run the following commands on your VPS.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install certbot python-certbot-nginx

Getting an SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt

Now that we installed Certbot, we can get a certificate from Let's Encrypt by running the following command.

sudo certbot --nginx -d example.com -d www.example.com

Auto-renew your certificates

To auto-renew the certificates you have installed, add the following command to your crontab (open by running crontab -e from the terminal):

0 * * * * sudo certbot renew