Apache/Nginx or other Linux-based webserver
It is possible to upload the validation file to a Linux-based server like Apache or Nginx in one of two ways: using FTP client or using SSH access to the server (terminal, command line interface (CLI)).
1. To use the FTP connection, you can use FTP clients like FileZilla, CyberDuck and so on.
Once installed over the web server in use, they will allow you to manage your hosting server files with an easy-to-use graphic user interface.
The document root folder for the website hosted on Apache is usually the folder ‘/var/www/html/’. There, you can create the ‘.well-known’ and ‘pki-validation’ folders on the hosting server and then upload the file to ‘pki-validation’.
The result should be the same – after upload, the validation file should be shown accessible via the validation link: http://yourdomainname.com/.well-known/pki-validation/(yourfilename).txt.
2. To place the validation file using the terminal, you need to log into your server via SSH connection. This can be done using SSH clients like PuTTY (for Windows) or Terminal (for Mac OS). You will need to specify your IP address (or servername or domain name), as well as the username and password to log into the SSH client. The SSH connection to the server should be set up beforehand.
Please keep in mind that, for security reasons, passwords are not displayed on the screen while entering them.
Once you are logged into the terminal, it will be necessary to know the exact document root folder for the domain name. This is specified in the configuration file enabled for this domain name, and shown in the ‘DocumentRoot’ line of that configuration file.
Also, in order to check the document root for the domain name, you can run the following command for Apache:
apachectl –S
or this one for Nginx:
nginx -T
The needed document root will be shown in the ‘Main Document Root’ line of the output.
You can use the cd command for navigating to the exact directory with the full path to it specified, as shown in the following example:
cd /etc/
Once you are in the root directory for the website, you will need to create the ‘.well-known’ folder. To do this, run the following command:
mkdir .well-known
Then navigate to ‘.well-known’ folder with cd and create the needed subfolder here:
mkdir pki-validation
The next step is to create the empty file in the ‘pki-validation’ folder with the name of the downloaded validation file (for example, ‘AN2D4C5H7F01823KRIDHJ.txt’).
You can do this by running nano AN2D4C5H7F01823KRIDHJ.txt in the ‘pki-validation’ folder.
Open the validation file on your PC and copy its contents. Then return to the terminal and paste the copied code by right-clicking in the terminal window.
Once the text is shown on the screen, press Ctrl+O, then Enter, and Ctrl+X to save the changes and exit the text editor window.
Now the validation file should be accessible in the browser via the link: http://yourdomainname.com/.well-known/pki-validation/(yourfilename).txt.