Self-Signed SSL Certificate for localhost in XAMPP with Windows

Hello everyone,

After after days of work i finally get out how to Secure your XAMPP localhost with a SSL Certificate. In the following example i will use „localhost“ as hostname. You can choose another name as well.

First you have to Download mkcert here

https://github.com/FiloSottile/mkcert/releases/download/v1.4.4/mkcert-v1.4.4-windows-amd64.exe

then just use it to create the pem files

mkcert -install localhost 127.0.0.1

Now just follow the instructions.

If all is going right – you get the following output:

The certificate is at "./localhost+1.pem" and the key at "./localhost+1-key.pem"

Now copy the file „localhost+1.pem“ to your xampp folder in the folder 

<xampp_folder>\apache\conf\ssl.crt\

Then copy the „localhost+1-key.pem“ file to the folder 

<xampp_folder>\apache\conf\ssl.key\

Okay – now you are nearly done.

Now edit the file

<xampp_folder>\apache\conf\httpd.conf

And add the lines below

 <VirtualHost *:80>
     DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs"
     ServerName localhost
     ServerAlias *.localhost
 </VirtualHost>
 <VirtualHost *:443>
     DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs"
     ServerName localhost
     ServerAlias *.localhost
     SSLEngine on
     SSLCertificateFile "C:\xampp\apache\conf\ssl.crt\localhost+1.pem"
     SSLCertificateKeyFile "C:\xampp\apache\conf\ssl.key\localhost+1-key.pem"
 </VirtualHost>

Now save it and start Apache in XAMPP – Now you can open the localhost via

https://localhost/

It should work now as SSL Connections.

If you want to add to another URL – just edit the hosts File from Windows and replace the Host in the Example above.

Okay – thats all!

I wish you good Luck and much fun 🙂

Greets Robert

Robert