HTTP & HTTPS

[JonsonSwartz]

what is best recommended when some of the pages on site goes from HTTP to HTTPS: 301 redirection or 302 redirection?
and why?

thank you

I was asked to elaborate so:

on my website I have open account pages. users are asked to fill the details. those page are secured and are HTTPS. the problem is that the whole website turned to HTTPS so they redirected most of the pages from HTTPS to HTTP.
the secured pages are redirected from HTTP to HTTPS.

I wanted to check if it's correct and what is the best redirection way (301 or 302)

[DeanAndrews]

I think you may need to elaborate a little on your question as to why the page goes from http to https ie for a cart checkout etc?

[LesleyPaone]

In my mind the answer is complicated and depends a lot on your site structure and how your cms or website handles https.

Case in point, if you go to a https page on your site and all of the links pointing out from that page are to https pages, but the pages are redirected to http pages I would consider that bad. The way some sites are written, they just use the same protocol that the current page uses no matter what, so you would have to redirect the links on the page to the non secure pages, I would use a 302 in that instance. At the same time if it is possible I would see if this can be corrected, because it is not proper. The same happens a lot going from non-secure to secure with some platforms as well.

This site has an example  of what I mean. http://junglejumparoo.com/product/jungle-jumparoo/  If you add the product to the cart, then hover over the checkout button, it is http, but clicking it redirects you to https. Then on the next page, if you mouse over the menu, you will notice that all of the links are https now. That is handling ssl incorrectly, but in that case I would use a 302 redirect I guess.

Doing the redirect is a quick fix, but as a long game I would try to fix the issue itself and not do a redirect.

[BlueprintMarketing]

The answer is 301 redirect however you would ideally like your chosen and page either non-www.or www.so

https://example.com

Or

https://www.example.com

To be a 200

Here is an example of  an HTTPS:// website and the headers it returns when run through this tool that will give you your answer.

http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/headers/test.php

The site I am referencing is using www. so I put the URL with the www.the tool referenced below the headers it will give me a 200 okay

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Server: nginx

Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 15:38:47 GMT

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Connection: keep-alive

Vary: Accept-Encoding

If I put the same URL from the same website into this tool but do not include www.

I receive this

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Server: nginx

Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 15:39:53 GMT

Content-Type: text/html

Keep in mind you will get a lot more information but you are really should only care about what it says after HTTP/1.1

Useing

http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/headers/test.php

Like the others though I am concerned as to how you are going to make this change.

What company are you buying the SSL certificate from? What is your hosting company? Many times these things are implemented via the hosting, load balancer, WAF etc.

There are so any ways to implement https://

that in less you elaborate a little bit more on your server architecture for instance if you could tell me for using a CMS in your hosting company that would be a big step in the right direction.

Are you using load balancers?

Are using a WAF

or CDN to carry the SSL Cert?

I strongly suggest you reference this information about redirection

http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

This great blog post by Cyrus Shepard

http://moz.com/blog/save-your-website-with-redirects

SSL if you are familiar with Regex I would strongly recommend taking a look at this great information provided by WP engine that can be used on WordPress platforms in addition to other platforms as well.

http://wpengine.com/support/regex/#ssl

If you are using a WAF (I do not recommend CloudFlare regardless I know that you would be using a similar tactic shown here depending on the WAF or cloudproxy)

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200172286-How-do-I-do-url-forwarding-with-CloudFlare-

sincerely,

Thomas

[BlueprintMarketing]

It could be this easy

http://kb.sucuri.net/cloudproxy/Configuration/how-to-enable-SSL