A "secure server" or "shared SSL" is an invention of your web hosting company. It is a way to use an SSL certificate without actually buying one. Every web hosting company that supplies a "Secure Server" facility does it differently. VP-CART only supports this shared SSL to take credit cards using our special sslshopcheckout.asp. This is true whether the "shared SSL" is just a separate folder on the same server or on another server.

VP-CART and Shared SSL

With a Shared SSL certificate you cannot:

• Use some of our supplied gateways
• Use the VP-CART Admin system in SSL Mode
• Use any other VP-CART files in SSL Mode

Gateways and Shared SSL

There are essentially three types of electronic gateways.

1. A very common payment gateway is "hosted", which does not take credit card details on your site, but on the gateway provider's server. In this case, you do not need SSL or shared SSL at all.
2. Most COM/XML-based gateway means that you can take credit card information on your site, and send it to an authentication server to process the credit card. In this case, you need your own SSL certificate or you can use shared SSL with our shared SSL enhancement. Many COM-based solutions will require you to install DLLs on your server; if you are in a shared hosting environment, you will need to contact your hosting provider.
3. The last type is a forms-based gateway where the gateway requires that you pass the credit card to them from your site. In this case, you do need your own SSL certificate. We have developed a method that can use shared SSL, instead of just SSL. Please contact us for details if this is a requirement and please tell us the gateway you are interested in. None of our "off the shelf" gateways support this method at this time.

For information on how to set up a payment gateway with shared SSL in VP-CART, please refer to our helpnotes.