What is a Certificate Signing Request or CSR?

Before you can order your SSL Certificates you must, first, generate a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) on your server.

A CSR is an encrypted body of text which is used as a public key that you generate on your server, according to your server software instructions.
The CSR is required during the SSL certificate enrollment process, because it validates the specific information about your web server and your organization.

Your CSR will contain encoded information specific to your company and domain name; this information is known as a Distinguished Name or DN.

In the DN, for most servers, are the following fields: Country, State (or Province), Locality (or City), Organization, Organizational Unit, and Common Name.