--- title: "Make Certificate - Muhammad Rehan Saeed" description: "Make certificate files by answering a few simple questions instead of using makecert.exe and pvk2pfx.exe, passing in some pretty cryptic arguments." canonical_url: "https://rehansaeed.com/make-certificate/" last_updated: "2016-02-07T00:00:00+00:00" meta: author: "Muhammad Rehan Saeed" keywords: "Certificates,MakeCertificate,PowerShell,Private Key,Public Key,SSL,TLS" "og:description": "Make certificate files by answering a few simple questions instead of using makecert.exe and pvk2pfx.exe, passing in some pretty cryptic arguments." "og:image": "https://rehansaeed.com/_og/s/o_398a7e57bdb3488a.png" "og:image:alt": "Make Certificate - Muhammad Rehan Saeed" "og:image:height": "630" "og:image:type": image/png "og:image:width": "1200" "og:title": "Make Certificate" "twitter:image": "https://rehansaeed.com/_og/s/o_398a7e57bdb3488a.png" "twitter:image:alt": "Make Certificate - Muhammad Rehan Saeed" --- > Index of every page on this site: [llms.txt](https://rehansaeed.com/llms.txt) # [Make Certificate](https://rehansaeed.com/make-certificate/) Posted 7 February 2016 - **1 min read** ![Make Certificate](https://rehansaeed.com/_ipx/f_webp&s_2560x1440/images/hero/Make-Certificate-1366x768.png) Making your own certificate files is quite hard work. You have to use `makecert.exe` and `pvk2pfx.exe`, passing in some pretty cryptic arguments which you always have to go back and research. Learning how to make a certificate and the different types of certificate is pretty important. I highly recommend reading [this](http://www.jayway.com/2014/09/03/creating-self-signed-certificates-with-makecert-exe-for-development/) blog post from Jayway.com which has some very detailed instructions and is the basis of MakeCertificate. To make things easier I made a PowerShell script called `MakeCertificate.ps1` which you can get on the [MakeCertificate](https://github.com/RehanSaeed/MakeCertificate) GitHub page. It asks you to pick the type of certificate you want to create, there are a few different types of certificates that MakeCertificate helps to make: Certificate Authority (CA) Certificates, SSL/TLS Server Certificates and Client Certificates. You are then asked a series of questions which when answered outputs three files - .cer - A public key file that can be shared. - .pvk - A private key file that should be kept secret. - .pfx - A combined public and private key file that should be kept secret. It also outputs the command you need to execute using `makecert.exe` and `pvk2pfx.exe` to recreate the certificate. ## Web Mentions [What's this?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webmention) ### 0 Linked ### 0 Replies ## GitHub Comments ### 2 Comments [Comment on GitHub](https://github.com/RehanSaeed/rehansaeed.github.io/issues/86) [![RehanSaeed](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/2270364?v=4)](https://github.com/RehanSaeed "RehanSaeed") ### [RehanSaeed](https://github.com/RehanSaeed) Owner 12 May 2020 [![Andy](https://camo.githubusercontent.com/0c022b529d52d54dc822b336aabb1013af11ca980246a2ba45a196bc1bd72df7/68747470733a2f2f7777772e67726176617461722e636f6d2f6176617461722f30306463383763656136323130326165343935356664383066346230386464333f733d393626643d6d6d26723d67)](https://camo.githubusercontent.com/0c022b529d52d54dc822b336aabb1013af11ca980246a2ba45a196bc1bd72df7/68747470733a2f2f7777772e67726176617461722e636f6d2f6176617461722f30306463383763656136323130326165343935356664383066346230386464333f733d393626643d6d6d26723d67) **Andy** commented on **2016-02-18 04:01:07** Hi it would be nice if you can also include an article on how to enable SSL in the asp mvc web app. I am not really sure how to integrate an SSL cert, (from buying it to integrating it and turning it on) [![RehanSaeed](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/2270364?v=4)](https://github.com/RehanSaeed "RehanSaeed") ### [RehanSaeed](https://github.com/RehanSaeed) Owner 12 May 2020 [![Muhammad Rehan Saeed](https://camo.githubusercontent.com/8a07049df41b8a3839a3f4342f09ea8e6e7fa0065667687f04beca2d088a1dca/68747470733a2f2f7777772e67726176617461722e636f6d2f6176617461722f32623266393030653361633066353535316462646537323864336262343935343f733d393626643d6d6d26723d67)](https://camo.githubusercontent.com/8a07049df41b8a3839a3f4342f09ea8e6e7fa0065667687f04beca2d088a1dca/68747470733a2f2f7777772e67726176617461722e636f6d2f6176617461722f32623266393030653361633066353535316462646537323864336262343935343f733d393626643d6d6d26723d67) **[Muhammad Rehan Saeed](https://rehansaeed.com/)** commented on **2016-02-18 14:39:42** > Hi it would be nice if you can also include an article on how to enable SSL in the asp mvc web app. > > I am not really sure how to integrate an SSL cert, (from buying it to integrating it and turning it on) This will be different depending on your web host. If you have access to IIS though, you just need to click on Centralized Certificates under the Management section on the IIS home page. There are lots of tutorials and docs online with screenshots on how to do this. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/#website","@type":"WebSite","description":"Software Developer at Microsoft, YouTuber, Open Source Contributor and Blogger","inLanguage":"en-GB","name":"Muhammad Rehan Saeed","url":"https://rehansaeed.com/","author":{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/#identity"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://rehansaeed.com/?search={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"publisher":{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/#publisher"}},{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/make-certificate/#webpage","@type":"WebPage","dateModified":"2016-02-07T00:00:00+00:00","datePublished":"2016-02-07T00:00:00+00:00","description":"Make certificate files by answering a few simple questions instead of using makecert.exe and pvk2pfx.exe, passing in some pretty cryptic arguments.","name":"Make Certificate","url":"https://rehansaeed.com/make-certificate/","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/make-certificate/#breadcrumb"},"isPartOf":{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/#website"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https://rehansaeed.com/make-certificate/"]}]},{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/#identity","@type":"Person","name":"Muhammad Rehan Saeed","url":"https://rehansaeed.com/about/","image":{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/#/schema/image/1"},"sameAs":["https://github.com/RehanSaeed","https://www.linkedin.com/in/muhammad-rehan-saeed","https://stackoverflow.com/users/1212017/muhammad-rehan-saeed","https://www.youtube.com/c/MuhammadRehanSaeed","https://www.twitch.tv/rehansaeeduk"]},{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/#publisher","@type":"Organization","logo":"https://rehansaeed.com/images/schema/Publisher-600x60.png","name":"Muhammad Rehan Saeed","url":"https://rehansaeed.com"},{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/make-certificate/#article","@type":"Article","dateModified":"2016-02-07T00:00:00+00:00","datePublished":"2016-02-07T00:00:00+00:00","description":"Make certificate files by answering a few simple questions instead of using makecert.exe and pvk2pfx.exe, passing in some pretty cryptic arguments.","headline":"Make Certificate","inLanguage":"en-GB","url":"https://rehansaeed.com/make-certificate/","author":{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/#identity"},"image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://rehansaeed.com/images/hero/Make-Certificate-1366x768.png","caption":"Make Certificate","width":"1366","height":"768"}],"isPartOf":{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/make-certificate/#webpage"},"keywords":["Certificates","MakeCertificate","PowerShell","Private Key","Public Key","SSL","TLS"],"mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/make-certificate/#webpage"},"publisher":{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/#publisher"}},{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/make-certificate/#breadcrumb","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","name":"Blog","item":"https://rehansaeed.com/","position":1},{"@type":"ListItem","name":"Make Certificate","item":"https://rehansaeed.com/make-certificate/","position":2}]},{"@id":"https://rehansaeed.com/#/schema/image/1","@type":"ImageObject","contentUrl":"https://rehansaeed.com/images/author/Muhammad-Rehan-Saeed/Logo-512x512.png","inLanguage":"en-GB","url":"https://rehansaeed.com/images/author/Muhammad-Rehan-Saeed/Logo-512x512.png"}]} ``` ## Sitemap See the full [sitemap](https://rehansaeed.com/sitemap.md) for all pages.