HTTP to HTTPS

[GavinP]

Hi

I'm just in the middle of getting my website read to switch from HTTP to HTTPS (making sure all pages are HTTPS compatible etc)

I've been thinking a bit on how to force the redirect from HTTP to HTTPS and obviously .access is the way to go.

Problem is I'm not sure how to do it, versus the rules I've already got which are as follow:


Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
#
# redirect index.htm and index.html to / (do this before non-www to www)
#
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*index\.html?\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.html?$ http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

# Redirect non-www urls to www
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.domain\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]


I have been thinking about possibly paying a web designer to set up the redirect for me but thought I'd reach out to the FQ community first to see if anybody knows what I should do.

[artemis]

Hi Gavin,

If you do a search on "htaccess http to https redirect" you can probably find a tutorial at your level...

I know people like to do that (force the change) but I don't. Instead I change the canonical so the bots know it's there and https will automatically get used over time for incoming links from search, and also elsewhere.

Am I missing something? Is there a reason I should be forcing the change?

As a side note, I'm grateful the certs we have work w and w/o the www... I do some work for my state u's distance program and have had issues in coursespaces where the way the https was implemented and the redirect forced resulted in broken links. This was by educational publishers. I'm not saying your method would, in their case, their cert did not not work both with and w/o www.

[GavinP]

Hi Artemis,

Most tutorials I've read about this indicate that you should do some form of redirection from http to https be that through htaccess or some other server side programe.

That is what GOD (Google ) themselves say on the matter;

https://support.google.com/webmaster.../6073543?hl=en

"Use server-side 301 redirects

Redirect your users and search engines to the HTTPS page or resource with server-side 301 HTTP redirects."

But you've got me wondering myself now lol!

[artemis]

... yeah, well I take them with a grain of salt .... I'm sure they have their reasons, but that's their reasons for their benefit...