WPEngine Causing Redirect Chain

[AaronHenry]

Hi guys,

Had a quick question that I wanted to verify here. After reviewing a Moz report we received some redirect chain error on all of our sites hosted with WPEngine. We noticed that the redirect chain appears to be coming from how the domains are configured in their control panel.

Essentially, there is a redirect:

• from staging/temp -> to live
• from non-www -> to www
• SSL redirect from http -> https

The issue here is that the non-www is redirecting to www and then redirected again to https://www

According to support the only way to get rid of this error is to drop the www version of the domain and to host everything under https://domain.com. To me it seems very odd that you cannot just go from http://non-www to https://www in just 1 301 redirect.

Has anyone else experienced this or am I just not looking at the situation correctly?

[AaronHenry]

Just thought I'd shoot an update - according to WPEngine the redirect will always be there. No way around it on their platform.

[JaredWPE]

Hey Aaron!

Jared from WP Engine here.

I just wanted to reach out and provide a bit of clarification on the redirect chain here. On our platform, it is possible to have non-www go to https://www directly.

To do so, it requires adding each domain individually within the User Portal under 'Domains'. (not combining them under redirects) Once done, you then create a Redirect Rule within the 'Redirect Rules' section with the following parameters:

Name: (this can be anything)
Domain: (your non-www domain)
Source: ^/(.*)
Destination: https://www.yourwwwdomain.com/$1

Once configured and the cache purged, a request to the non-www version of your address will skip the http://www redirect and go directly to the secure https://www version.

If you run into any trouble getting it set up, please reach out to our team and we will be glad to help configure it for you.

Thanks,
Jared Arnold

[AaronHenry]

Thanks for this information! All of the support agents I spoke with told me that it was not possible. They were all extremely professional, but perhaps they didn't understand what I was asking. I'm glad to hear there is a way to make it happen. WPE is a great platform for us.

[DonnaDuncan]

Same question but for the www version of the site. Can it route directly to HTTPS without a redirect? Do I just have to delete the existing non-www to www redirect and follow your logic above? It will take care of both www and non-www redirecting to HTTPS?

I have also asked the help desk several times for a solution, although not recently. I was told it wasn't possible.

[JaredWPE]

Hi Aaron,

You're very welcome and I'm glad that you've been overall enjoying the platform!

It's very possible that they didn't quite grasp the request, though it is a bit of an SEO quirk to configure. I'll be following up with some of our team to help ensure our internal documentation's up to date so that should this be asked in the future, we can provide a more consistent experience for you.

Thanks!
Jared Arnold

[JaredWPE]

Hi Donna,

Thanks for the followup!

This method would work for both www and non-www to get it over to https://. We handle redirects on the Nginx layer, so by adding in a Redirect Rule it overwrites any default platform redirect rules in the User Portal and ensures your preferred setup is handled first.

If you run into any trouble getting it configured, please reach out to us and we'll be glad to ensure it gets set up properly. Should anyone tell you it's not possible, request that they reach out to me and I'll be sure to instruct them on the method to get it squared away.

Cheers,
Jared Arnold

[Matt312]

Hi Jared,

In the WPE redirect rule editor, it doesn't provide an option for the non-www domain. Only "All domains" and "www.mywwwdomain.com". What do you suggest doing here to eliminate the redirect chain?