SSL in development environment (IIS)

By far the simplest way to setup an SSL certificate for your testing and/or development environment. Works for IIS5.0, 5.1(XP) and 6.0.

Step 1. Download Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Resource Kit Tools

Step 2. When running the installation package, do a custom setup and select only the "selfSSL" component.

Step 3. Start -> All Programs -> IIS Resources -> SelfSSL -> SelfSSL

Step 4. At the command prompt, copy and paste the following:selfssl.exe /N:CN=[SERVER_NAME] /K:1024 /V:7 /S:1 /P:443 /T

IMPORTANT: Make sure the replace [SERVER_NAME] with your real server(machine) name.

Done. Let me just say that I've actually seen people ask how to accomplish this task, only to be told, "It's a waste of time. Why would you ever need to do such a thing?!?! Just blah blah blah..."

Well first off, I don't know about you, but I like my dev environment to resemble, as closely as possible, my production environment. Second, this step is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL when writing, testing and deploying ANY process that requires SSL. If you think it isn't, come back here when you finally figure it out and apologize.