What is the difference between an SSL certificate and a Wildcard SSL certificate?
An SSL certificate secures a single domain name.
A Wildcard SSL certificate secures multiple sub-domains of a single domain name.
When generating a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) for a Wildcard certificate, please add an asterisk (*) to the left of the Common Name where you want the difference to the certificate to occur. (e.g., "*.domainnamegoes.com" would work for www.domainnamegoes.com or secure.domainnamegoes.com or "www*.domainnamegoeshere.com" if you wanted www1.domainnamegoes.com or www2.domainnamegoes.com). This secures all sub-domains of the hosted domain defined by the "*" and the basic domain name.
NOTE: The primary domain name is covered even without defining the base domain. *.domainname.com is also covered with the certificate as just: domainname.com