Configuring acme.sh and creating a web app using IDN

Questions and discussion about web design, search engine optimisation and hosting
Santeri
Posts: 287
Joined: 2017-7-5 09:58

Unread post by Santeri » 2019-9-14 19:28

I updated an old website and moved it under internationalized domain name (IDN). The domain name is lisäämyyntiä.com which is in punycode format https://www.xn--lismyynti-x2aag.com/. Both work fine as you can see.

acme.sh refused to create an SSL certificate unless the domain name was given in punycode format:

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acme.sh --issue -d xn--lismyynti-x2aag.com -d www.xn--lismyynti-x2aag.com
In the website headers, Facebook OpenGraph had troubles with IDN and required punycode to work:

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<meta property="og:url" content="https://www.xn--lismyynti-x2aag.com/">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://www.xn--lismyynti-x2aag.com/lisää-myyntiä-ultra-lean-business/og-facebook.png">
Twitter and the rest of the meta tags had no problems with IDN. I used IDN even in the canonical meta tag and I look forward to observing will the site rank better thanks to the most important search words being present in the domain name using Scandinavian letters.

Here is an announcement of the new website and app in Finnish

Päivitin Antti Leijalan ja UltraLeanBusiness Oy Ltd:n verkkosivun uuden brändin mukaiseksi ja tein siitä samalla mobiilisovelluksen. Tervemenoa, jos kaipaat lisää myyntiä.

Lisää myyntiä



Santeri
Posts: 287
Joined: 2017-7-5 09:58

Unread post by Santeri » 2020-1-8 03:04

Don't try to add non-punycoded IDNs. They will break acme.sh. I have notified Neil about the issue and he is working to fix it.

Santeri
Posts: 287
Joined: 2017-7-5 09:58

Unread post by Santeri » 2020-2-4 03:57

Thanks to Corona virus Neil is having a bit hard time in China. I debugged the IDN issue with acme.sh and here are detailed instructions how to fix issues.

If you add to acme.sh IDNs that contain special characters instead of punycode, they will break listing of all certs. You will be able to see all certs with command

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acme.sh --list --debug 2
Although cert viewing will be broken, all valid punycoded IDNs and other certs will renew normally. To be able to list them again, you need to remove manually all IDNs with special characters

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acme.sh --remove -d lisäämyyntiä.com
After that listing certs will work again normally

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acme.sh --list
If you are working with GitHub despite of Microsoft, you could submit a patch to acme.sh to fix this issue. A simple check to an added (--issue -d) domain name that it may not contain any special characters should do it, and the related error message explaining that added domains must be punycoded if any other characters than basic ASCII characters such as letters, digits, and hyphens, are present in the domain name.

The new IDN I was testing is ranking perfectly. It is at the top search results in every Western search engine with the most important search word typed using Scandinavian letters:
Lisää myyntiä
We are happy to help you with web design and SEO!

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