cPanel service certificates & Godaddy restrictions

[JM1775]

So I have a GoDaddy VPS (yea... I know) with WHM and CPanel and realized this morning when upcp ran after everything was setup, that GoDaddy restricts free hostname certs. Which in terms of revenue generation I can understand that (not that I agree with it, but that's a different discussion in terms of security).
In any event, I found the "cPanel certificates self-signed?" thread that @cPanelMichael suggested a work around by creating a subdomain under an existing account and using AutoSSL to generate the certificate. When I try to do that under Cpanel I get this error -
"There was a problem creating the sub-domain:
Sorry you cannot create a subdomain with the same name as the hostname of this machine (server.example.com)."
Am I missing something here on being able to create that subdomain ?

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello,

The referenced thread is located at:

cPanel certificates self-signed?

You would have to create a subdomain that doesn't match your existing hostname. For instance, if your server's hostname is "server.example.tld", then you could create a subdomain named "cpanel.example.tls" or "server1.example.tls". You could then install the certificate for that subdomain for your services via:

"WHM Home » Service Configuration » Manage Service SSL Certificates"

You'd also need to create an empty "/var/cpanel/ssl/disable_auto_hostname_certificate" file to avoid the automatic replacement of the certificate during updates.

Keep in mind this is only a workaround, and isn't a supported solution. The "Domain TLS" system in cPanel version 60 is likely a better option. You can read more about, along with the additional improvements to AutoSSL at:

60 Release Notes - Documentation - cPanel Documentation

Thank you.