WPEngine Causing Redirect Chain
-
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 This works. i had numerous redirect hops on wpengine. i followed these industructions and my issue went away. Make sure you clear cache when you do this (on the site and wpengine cache)... also make sure you dont have any redirects on the domain or cloud flare dns file level. Remove any redriects of the primary and set www. as the primary.
-
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?
-
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 -
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 -
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.
-
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.
-
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/$1Once 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 -
Just thought I'd shoot an update - according to WPEngine the redirect will always be there. No way around it on their platform.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Javascript is redirecting search bots to mobile
Here is the javascript I am using to send users to the mobile version of my website: This is causing major issues in Bing and Yahoo as the mobile website is the only thing ranking. I'd love any help dissecting this issue. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | ShawnW0 -
Max Number of 301 Redirections?
Hi, We currently made a re-design of a website and we changed all our urls to make them shorter. I made more than 300 permanent redirections but plenty more are needed since WMT is showing some more 404s from old urls that I hadn't seen because they were dynamic. The question is, please, is there a limit? I think we have more than 600 already. We don't want to create a php commando to redirect all the old ones to our home, we are redirecting them to their correspondent url. By the way, Im doing them with the 301 method in .htaccess. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | Tintanus0 -
How best to fix 301 redirect problems
Hi all Wondering if anyone could help out with this one. Roger Bot crawler has just performed it's weekly error crawl on my site and I appear to have 18,613 temp redirect problems!! Rather, the same 1 problem 18,613 times. My site is a magento store and the errors it is giving me is due to the wishlist feature on the site. For example, it is trying to crawl links such as index.php/wishlist/index/add/product/29416/form_key/DBDSNAJOfP2YGgfW (which would normally add the item to one's wishlist). However, because Roger isn't logged into the website it means that all these requests are being sent to the login url with the page title of Please Enable Cookies. Would the best way to fix this be to enable wishlists for guests? I would rather not do that but cannot think of another way of fixing it. Any other Magento people come across this issue? Thanks, Carl
Technical SEO | | daedriccarl0 -
What should I do with URLs that cause site map errors?
Hi Mozzers, I have a client who uses an important customer database and offers gift cards via https://clients.mindbodyonline.com located within the navigation which causes sitemap errors whenever it is submitted since domain is different. Should I ask to remove those links from navigation? if so where can I relocate those links? If not what should I do to have a site map without any errors? Thanks! 1n16jlL.png
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Which to redirect to, www or non-www?
Please help. I have a client who's site has duplicate content issues due mainly to the www/non-www problem. The MOZ page authority of both is the same, the www version has more linking root domains, and for most of the keywords the www version shows up in Google. The developer indicated the site is on the non-www. I need to do a .htacess 301 redirect to eliminate the dup content problems. Which do I redirect to? Any help is greatly appreciated, Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | SteveFaber0 -
Redirect not picking up any link juice
Hi, We recently had a domain name change, as we had an established site we had all pages redirected to the new domain. This was over a month ago but despite the redirect SEOmoz doesn't recognise any links to and from the site. Is this due to simply time duration and SEOmoz can't pick up on any redirected info, or could there be a problem with the redirect? Thanks, Adam
Technical SEO | | adamgthorndike0 -
Redirect or not to redirect
We are rebuilding a website and try to get rid of errors. The content remains exactly the same but we correct the code and make it load faster. The site has quite many backlinks and I can't decide whether to remove .html endings from the urls and 301 redirect to the new ones or leave them with the older ending. If I remove the endings how much of the link juice will be passed? Anyone any idea?
Technical SEO | | sesertin0 -
What are the causes of pages desindexation?
Hello, I was wondering what can be the causes of pages desindexation by Google? A poor quality pages,...? Thank you for your answers, Jonathan
Technical SEO | | JonathanLeplang0