Why Is My Webroot Auto Renewal Not Working?

As a webmaster, I was recently faced with an unexpected issue - my website's auto renewal of its SSL certificate had stopped functioning. The problem was particularly frustrating because it affected my domain 'li' which has been working smoothly for over two years without any issues.

After conducting some research and troubleshooting, I discovered that the issue lay with the webroot plugin, which is used to serve files from a specific path on my VPS server. Upon further investigation, I found that the problem was caused by an invalid response from the server when trying to fetch data from the specified URL.

To resolve this issue, I had to ensure that my domain name was entered correctly and that the DNS A/AAAA records for that domain contained the right IP address. I also checked that no firewalls were preventing the server from communicating with the client.

Despite taking these steps, I still encountered errors when trying to fetch data from the server. The log error message indicated that the HTTP-01 challenge had failed for multiple domains. This led me to suspect that there was an issue with my DNS setup or VPS configuration.

After moving the website back to Cloudflare and setting up the DNS carefully, I realized that the problem persisted. To eliminate any potential issues with my DNS provider, Namecheap, I returned the NS to their servers. However, this did not resolve the issue.

Fortunately, I have another VPS server hosting multiple domains without any problems, which led me to suspect that the issue was specific to my 'li' domain. After further investigation, I discovered that the problem lay with the webroot auto renewal plugin itself, rather than my DNS or VPS configuration.

In conclusion, resolving issues with webroot auto renewal requires a combination of troubleshooting and careful setup. It is essential to ensure that your domain name is entered correctly, DNS A/AAAA records are configured properly, and firewalls do not block communication between the server and client. If you encounter issues with SSL certificate renewal, it may be worth exploring alternative solutions or seeking assistance from your DNS provider or VPS host.

Webroot auto renewal