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Validate your domain with a file on your website

With file validation you put a small text file on the website for the domain. It proves you control the site. It works for a single domain that already has a working website. It is not suitable for a wildcard name.

How it works

1. Place your order and choose HTTP file or HTTPS file as the validation method. These are separate choices: pick the one your site answers on.
2. After the order is placed with the authority, the exact file name, the folder it must go in and what it must contain are emailed to you and shown in your account on the order page.
3. Create the file with exactly that name and contents, and upload it to exactly that folder. It is normally a folder starting /.well-known/ in the main folder of your website.
4. The authority fetches the file and issues the certificate once it can read it.

Check you can see it

Open the file's full address in a browser while signed out of everything. You should see only the text of the file. If you see a web page, an error, or a login, the authority will see the same.

Common problems

• A folder starting with a dot is hidden. In some file managers you must switch on show hidden files to see or create .well-known.
• The site redirects the address to another page, to https, or to a different domain. The file needs to be served at the address given. Exclude that folder from the redirect.
• A firewall, password or security plug-in blocks outside visitors to that folder.
• Extra text or a different file ending. The file contents must be exactly what we gave you, with no added lines, and the name must match.
• The domain points at a different server. The file must be on the server the domain currently points to.

More help: domain validation is not completing.

More in this section

• Validate your domain by email
• Validate your domain with a DNS record

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