SOURCECAKE : Wildcard SSL

 

 

Exactly what is a Wildcard SSL certificate?
A Wildcard SSL Certificate secures your site URL and an unlimited number of its subdomains. The Wildcard SSL Certificate works much the same way like a regular SSL certificate, undergoes exactly the same validation processes..
The main differenceis always that the Wildcard SSL Certificate also includes every one of the subdomains within your domainyou’d like to secure. For instance, www. caneja.com, blog. caneja.com, and register. caneja.com can all be secured together with a single Wildcard SSL Certificate.
When generating a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) for any Wildcard certificate, add an asterisk (*) to the left of the Common Name where you would like to specify the wildcard.
Examples:
*.caneja.com SSL’s www.caneja.com, secure.caneja.com, and so on.
www*.caneja.com secures www1.caneja.com, www2.caneja..com, etc.
*.mail.caneja.com secures secure.mail.caneja.com.com, www.mail.caneja.com.com, etc.
TIP: *.caneja.comis not going to work with mail.www.caneja.com when viewing it on Internet Explorer as Microsoft expects the asterisk in the leading position. FireFox 3, however, will read mail.www. as the entire replacement for the asterisk.
NOTE: Some operating systems expect a dedicated and static IP for each one of the subdomainswhich are utilizing the single wildcard certificate.
 

From : blog.caneja.com