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HTTPS & Local Certificates

Secure your environment with HTTPS using self-signed certificates for local development or Let’s Encrypt for production.

Production & Staging

1. Enable HTTPS in environment:

Set the protocol in your production or staging environment file:

APP_PROTOCOL=https

2. Issue TLS Certificates via Let’s Encrypt:

Run the built-in Certbot script:

make ssl

This will:

  • Read APP_DOMAIN from .env

  • Temporarily stop NGINX

  • Run 🔐 Certbot in standalone mode (port 80 must be open publicly)

  • Save certificate files to:

    config/ssl/live/<your-domain>/fullchain.pem
config/ssl/live/<your-domain>/privkey.pem

  • Restart NGINX with HTTPS enabled

ℹ️ If the certificate already exists, the script skips renewal. ⚠️ Ensure port 80 is open and not blocked by a firewall or ISP.

3. Manual Certificates (optional):

You may manually place your certificates at:

config/ssl/live/<your-domain>/fullchain.pem
config/ssl/live/<your-domain>/privkey.pem

Local Development

Let’s Encrypt does not issue certificates for local domains like .localhost. Use self-signed certificates instead.

Option 1: mkcert (recommended)

Install mkcert and run:

mkcert -install
mkcert myproject.localhost

This creates two files, e.g.:

myproject.localhost.pem
myproject.localhost-key.pem

Rename and copy them to:

config/ssl/live/myproject.localhost/fullchain.pem
config/ssl/live/myproject.localhost/privkey.pem

Then update your local environment type file at config/environment/.env.type.local, or create an override file at
config/environment/.env.type.local.override.

➡️ See Environment Configuration and Secret Management for details.

APP_PROTOCOL=https

Start your environment:

make up

📌 Local HTTPS support assumes your domain matches the certificate. Adjust your /etc/hosts accordingly.

Option 2: Manual Self-Signed Certificates

Generate self-signed certificates using OpenSSL:

openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 \
  -keyout config/ssl/live/myproject.localhost/privkey.pem \
  -out config/ssl/live/myproject.localhost/fullchain.pem \
  -subj "/CN=myproject.localhost"

This creates a self-signed certificate valid for 365 days.

⚠️ Self-signed certificates will trigger browser warnings. You can bypass them for local development. To avoid warnings, you can add the self-signed certificate to your system's trusted certificates store.

See Letsencrypt Documentation for more details on using self-signed certificates locally.

↻ Switching to HTTPS and redirects

The NGINX setup supports both HTTP and HTTPS, with automatic redirection configured via:

  • config/nginx/config/http.conf.template — used when APP_PROTOCOL=http
  • config/nginx/config/https.conf.template — used when APP_PROTOCOL=https

Redirection behavior:

  • HTTP → HTTPS
  • www.domain → domain

Configuration is automatically templated and mounted at container start. No manual edits are required in *.conf files.