Using an SSL connection in windows azure

Question

I'll admit i am very new to web app development and have primarily developed offline. I am developing a facebook application and have decided to give windows azure a shot at being my host.

Facebook requires SSL to use and of course on my development machine this works fine, but i do not have my own SSL certificate. In order to have a custom SSL certificate I need to upgrade my azure subscription to get a custom domain and be able to upload my own custom SSL certificate.

Is there any alternative to get my site to allow SSL (https) requests during my development process because paying for a custom SSL, domain and reserved azure instance in an application during the initial build process seems to be a needless expense.

Answer 1

Windows Azure Web Sites is a prime candidate for Facebook application development. If you use the base domain mysite.azurewebsites.net you have SSL without needing your custom domain.

The reason for this being the azurewebsites.net domain has a wild card certificate in place.