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Redirect HTTP to HTTPS on nginx

headers.redirect.no_redirect · effort: minutes

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 the port 443 server serves every page correctly.
  2. 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).
  3. Stage 2: replace the contents of the port 80 server with the redirect below, run sudo nginx -t and reload.
nginx 
server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name example.com;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

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

Read the documentation (opens in a new tab)

Related

Scan your domain to see whether this applies to you.