Redirect of https:// to http:// without SSL. Possible or not?!

[JennaD14]

Good afternoon, smart dudes : )

I am here to ask for your help. I posted this question on google help forum and stackoverflow, but looks like people do not know the correct answer...

QUESTION: We used to have a secured site, but recently purchased a separate reservation software that provides SSL (takes clients to a separate secured website) where they can fill out the reservation form. We cancelled our SSL (just think its a waste to pay $100 for securing plain text).  Now i have so many links pointing to our secured site and i have no idea how to fix it! How do i redirect https://www.mysite.comto http://www.mysite.com.Also would like to mention that i already have redirect from non www to www domain (not sure if that matters): RewriteEngine onRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com$ [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L]As i already mentioned....we do not have SSL!!!! None of those 301 redirect codes i found online work (you have to have SSL for the site to be redirected from https to http | currently i get an error - can't establish a secured connection to the server ). Is there anything i can do???? Or do i have to purchase SSL again?

[JennaD14]

forgot to mention that i think all those broken links are affecting our rank (traffic went down since the day we cancelled SSL) !

[LesleyPaone]

One thing to keep in mind, is that google has said soon they are going to favor secure results over non secure ones.  http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/04/14/google-may-push-sites-to-use-encryption/

Also, if you are paying $100 a year for having an ssl, you are paying too much. You can get a certificate at namecheap for like $8 or so and a dedicated ip address is usually like $24.

But to directly answer your question, ask you host to make sure port 443 is open on the server. If it is not open, the request will die before the htaccess has a chance to handle the request. Also, I would recommend adding a canonical url to the site as well.

[JennaD14]

Thank you, Lesley.

I guess its just easier to get a 10$ SSL and solve this problem (i already have dedicated ip).

Then another question (last one)....do i need to add any code to htaccess to avoid duplicate content (https:// vs http:// if it is considered to be duplicate)...Thank you!!!

[LesleyPaone]

If you use the sll certificate, I would add a canonical url to the site and just direct everything to the ssl site, then you will be ahead of the game when google starts promoting ssl results.