Testing your new SSL certificate is simple. Simply create a new HTML/ASP page in a directory under your web site. Next, fire up your favorite web browser and load the page that you have just created. Instead of using the normal http://www.myserver.com/page.html syntax, change the http:// to https://. This tells the web server that a secure connection is being requested. If your certificate is installed correctly, you will notice a padlock in your browsers’ status bar. Double click on the padlock to view the details of your web servers’ certificate.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed a SSL certificate on your web server! If you received a configuration error in your browser, visit msdn.microsoft.com and search for the error number you received. The search should find several knowledge base articles that will help you remedy the problem(s).

Now that you have successfully installed a SSL certificate on your web server, you can modify your site to use SSL encryption by simply changing any links that reference your pages via http:// to https://. Having a SSL certificate installed will boost the credibility of your site, and will put any fears of security that your customers have to rest.