Tracking down the actual location of the SSL certificate in a Plesk subscription is a process I hope never to use again. But… I am getting an error while trying to install a certificate manually on the site.

Error: Some fields are empty or contain an improper value.

Certificate Name*

I wasted an hour before I realised that I still had a partial certificate setup in the old sub-domain that I could not use. I deleted that certificate restarted Apache. Generated a new certificate request and revised the certificate via RapidSSL. The install of the certificate in Plesk still reported an error with the signing Authority. I ended up at https://knowledge.rapidssl.com/support/ssl-certificate-support/index?page=content&id=SO16226 to find the correct Intermediate certificates for Plesk Apache.

And while Plesk seemed to settle down after adding them, using IE or Chrome to visit the site gave me errors that the Certificate was invalid.

I used http://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-checker.html to confirm the certificate and it came back as self-signed.

The penny dropped that I had not re-started the web service and the Apache config would still be using the default Plesk certificate.

A quick restart and it’s all good.