Here is how to setup a domain to use a self-signed certificate using Simple Control Panel, a free control panel for a dedicated linux server hosted by GoDaddy. This way you can setup your domain to use http secure (https) using SSL. The process is different using the Plesk control panel, and very simple.

In spite of this entire process being incredibly easy (once you figure it out), I couldn’t find a step-by-step guide on how to do it, in spite of an extensive Google search. But after experimenting around a bit, it was amazing to find out how easy it was. Here’s the step-by-step guide:

1. Login to your simple control panel.

2. In the “System Configuration” section, click on “SSL Certificates”

3. Create a self-signed certificate, and assign it to the domain you which to access via https.

4. Now, once again in the “System Configuration” section, click on “Domains”

5. Edit the domain you listed in #3 above.

6. in the “SSL Certificate” drop-down list, select the self-signed certificate you created in #3 above.

7. Upload your files to “public_html” via FTP.  In Plesk, you would upload files to the “https” directory, but using Simple Control Panel, just upload your files to the regular location.

8. You can now access the files from both http:// and https:// for example, say you uploaded the file “test.txt” to your domain, in the “public_html” directory. Then, you can access “test.txt” via:

http://<yourdomain>/test.txt

- or -

https://<yourdomain>/test.txt

There is no need to SSH to your server, mess around with httpd.conf or ssl.conf or .htaccess or to even restart apache. Simple!