Converting Self-Signed Certificates into certificates with a Private Key that IIS can use

Enabling SSL on SharePoint test sites will display the standard IE or Firefox certificate error.

To avoid this and provide a smooth experience for test users you can generate a Self-Signed certificate and  convert this to a .pfx file that can be imported into IIS.

When generating self-signed certificates for test systems this method will allow you to get a self-signed certificate with Private Key

Generate a self-signed  cert and Private Key

http://www.trustico.co.uk/ssltools/create/certificate-pem/create-self-signed-ssl-certificate.php

Copy the Certificate and Private key to their own respective text file and save with relevant names.

Change the extension of the certificate to a .pem or .crt file

Convert to usable self-signed certificate including private key (Convert PEM To PKCS12 (PFX) Format)

http://www.trustico.co.uk/ssltools/convert/pem-to-pkcs12/convert-pem-to-pkcs12.php

Paste in the Private Key and self-signed certificate, create a password.

Download the .zip file containing the .pfx certificate with Private Key

This .pfx file can now be imported into IIS.

You will still need to import the .pem/.crt self-signed certificate into your own PC “Trusted Root Certification  Authorities > Certificates” certificate store.

This can be done manually or via Group Policy if required for a large environment.

This will prevent the certificate errors when accessing a SSL enabled SharePoint site in your test environments.

Wikipedia has more information on the file extensions used for SSL certificates here :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.509