Well that’s just sad…

GoDaddy TOTALLY SUCKS!!!

I sure am getting sick and tired of GoDaddy‘s silly antics (they recently raised the cost of their domain renewals by more than 100% as well). Guess that I can no longer recommend them. I’ll go ahead and update my how-to article and remove all references to GoDaddy from it just as soon as I can.

In the mean time… If you haven’t already purchased your custom/vanity domain, then I suggest purchasing it from a more reasonable domain registrar like Namecheap instead. They offer a free dynamic DNS update service and client, and a free domain privacy service with all of their domains.

Otherwise, if you already have your custom/vanity domain hosted by GoDaddy, then for the dynamic DNS updates (i.e. if your ISP doesn’t offer you a static IP address for your WAN), just use the FreeDNS or Duck DNS dynamic DNS service and update client that’s mentioned within my how-to article. They both work really well and are free of charge.

As for using Certify the web to obtain a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate… If your ISP isn’t blocking the standard HTTP port (i.e. TCP port 80), and you’re not planning on using a wildcard SSL cert, then go ahead and use http-01 domain validation instead. It’s simple to set up, works well, and doesn’t require a separate DNS API provider (such as GoDaddy, etc.).

Otherwise, you will most likely need to use the “Update DNS Manually” method for your dns-01 domain validation by manually creating the required ‘TXT’ record in the DNS zone of your GoDaddy domain (which doesn’t require the GoDaddy DNS API, but will require you to manually update the TXT record for every renewal of your SSL cert; i.e. every 90 days).

Other than that… You’d need to choose a different DNS API provider, that’s supported by Certify the web, and then set your nameservers in GoDaddy to point over to your new DNS provider (which is easy to do from the DNS section of your GoDaddy dashboard).

Sorry for the hassle on this one.

EDIT #1: It looks like using ACME-DNS as your DNS API provider in Certify the web is definitely the way to go here. To do so, just follow the simple instructions provided here. I’ve just tested this dns-01 validation method out on one of my own GoDaddy hosted domains (using a wildcard Let’s Encrypt SSL cert) and it worked perfectly (using the default trusted acme-dns server). I’ll go ahead and update my how-to article with this method instead.

EDIT #2: Okay, my how-to article has been updated now. Enjoy!

EDIT #3: I’ve now transferred all of my domains (including TheOfficeMaven.com) from GoDaddy over to Namecheap. I can’t believe how much better (and less expensive) Namecheap is. After more than 20 years of being with them, I now say good riddance to GoDaddy!