HTTPS 301 Redirect Question

[opstart]

Hi,

I've just migrated our previous site (siteA) to our new url (siteB) and I've setup 301 redirects from the old url (siteA) to the new (siteB). However, the old url operated on https and users who try to go to the old url with https (https://siteA.com) receive a message that the server cannot be reached, while the users who go to http://siteA.com are redirected to siteB.

Is there a way to 301 redirect https traffic?

Also, from an SEO perspective if the site and all the references on Google search are https://siteA.com does a 301 redirect of http pass the domain authority, etc. or is https required?

Thanks.

[Brando16]

Google recommends using https (https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html). Is there a reason why you no longer wish to utilize it?

Otherwise, this might work for your redirect: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8371/how-do-you-redirect-https-to-http

[opstart]

Hi,

Sorry I may not have explained the issue well enough.

I'm still looking to use https.

I simply want to redirect https://oldsite.com (and http://oldsite.com) to https://newsite.com, but I can seemingly only redirect http traffic with a 301 redirect in the htaccess file.

Thanks.

[davebuts]

Hi Jonathon,

I did this recently and used the following in my htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^oldsite.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.oldsite.com$
RewriteRule (.*)$ https://www.newsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

It redirects http and https to the new domain.

Is this what yours looks like? Can you copy and paste what you are using in your htaccess file so we can check it out? (use oldsite/newsite - don't need to give us the domain)

Cheers,

David

[opstart]

Hi David,

Thanks.

the htaccess for the site currently looks like this:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.oldsite.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^ https://www.newsite.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

The end goal would be to redirect:

http://oldsite.com

http://www.oldsite.com

https://oldsite.com

https://www.oldsite.com

To the new url:

https://www.newsite.com

Thanks for your help.

[davebuts]

Hi Jonathon,

If the one I posted above doesn't work, try this one:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*) https://www.newsite.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,NC]

Both should do exactly what you want, but let me know how you go!

Cheers,

David

[Highland]

I don't know if you admin your own server, but if you do, you should be able to easily tell it to redirect HTTP to HTTPS. I do this with Apache (it's much easier and faster than .htaccess) and it works really well.

[Brando16]

Hi Jonathon,

Below is what I have in my htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]