Redirect HTTP to HTTPS

Why it matters

Visitors who type the bare domain or follow an old link land on the unencrypted site and stay there. A permanent redirect sends every http request to the same page over https.

Staged change. Do this in stages and check each one before the next, so a mistake does not break your site or your mail.

The fix

1. Stage 1: confirm that every page, asset and form you are about to redirect works over https without warnings.
2. Stage 2: make the port 80 site answer every request with a 301 redirect to the same host and path on https://.
3. If the site is behind Cloudflare or another CDN that connects to this server over plain http (Cloudflare Flexible mode), this redirect loops. Switch the CDN to Full (strict) first, or redirect at the CDN instead (Always Use HTTPS).
4. Check it with curl -sI http://example.com/ and expect the response below. Add HSTS afterwards, starting with a short max-age.

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://example.com/

The examples use example.com. Replace it with your own domain.

Read the documentation ↗(opens in a new tab)

Related

• Reported by the HTTP to HTTPS redirect check
• Serve the site over HTTPS
• Stop redirecting HTTPS to HTTP
• Fix the broken HTTPS redirect chain
• Shorten the redirect chain
• Fix the HTTP redirect chain
• Redirect HTTP straight to HTTPS
• Answer HTTP with a redirect to HTTPS
• Redirect www and apex to one host
• Make the www or apex name work over HTTPS