Confused as to why SSL certificate will not install

Katie

10/10/23, 8:33 PM

I am transferring a few websites from Digital Ocean servers to SiteGround. I am confused as to the behavior I am seeing and my understanding of TTL. I have been doing this kind of thing for years (run lots of websites on both DO and SG) and I have never seen this. It is bothersome, because meanwhile, the transferred website is not running on https and warning any potential visitors.

Here are the steps I am taking to move a couple of websites, both exhibited the same pattern:

Upload the files of the website over on SiteGround
Change the A record to point from DO over to SiteGround, set the TTL for the change to 5 minutes
Soon after, I can see the switch has been made (at least for me) and the SSL certificate understandably fails, and now the website is insecure to anyone visiting it that is routed to the SG server.
Go to SiteGround's SSL certificate installer to reinstall the certificate and it fails...and fails and now 4 or so hours have passed and it still fails

I contacted their support and they said I would have to wait 48-72 hours for the ability to get the new SSL certificate. That is the part I don't understand. If I set the TTL on the A records to 5 minutes, wouldn't it propagate within those minutes (or at least close to it?), so when SiteGround installs the certificate the challenge would work? I am about to transfer a lot of websites, and trying to figure out a pattern that would avoid this SSL outage. Any ideas why the behavior?

0 + 4

ttl

ssl-certificate

larsks

10/11/23, 2:06 AM

What was the TTL before you changed it?

dave_thompson_085

10/11/23, 2:07 AM

No. If the TTL on the new record is 5 min, then users (resolvers, stubs, etc) will (or at least officially should) cache it only 5 min. If the TTL on the _old_ record before your change _was_ say 24 hours, users may and often will have cached that record for 24 hours and won't fetch your new record until that time expires. This is why all competent instructions tell you to reduce the TTL days or even weeks _before_ making a change.

Katie

10/11/23, 1:50 PM

@larsks - the TTL was at 15 minutes.

Katie

10/11/23, 1:53 PM

@dave_thompson_085 -agree, it feels like SiteGround has its own timeline

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