Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Woocommerce add-to-cart causing increase in temporary redirect
Hi, I was wondering is negatively influencing the SEO. Woocommerce add-to-cart is, logically, a 302. However, MOZ is alarming that there is a large amount of temporary redirects on my site. Do I have to act on this or just leave as is? I change the nofollow to follow but not sure if this does more harm then good. Would like to hear some input regarding this issue.
Technical SEO | | ruevoliere0 -
301 redirect syntax for htaccess
I'm working on some htaccess redirects for a few stray pages and have come across a few different varieties of 301s that are confusing me a bit....Most sources suggest: Redirect 301 /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html or using some combination of: RewriteRule + RewriteCond + RegEx I've also found examples of: RedirectPermanent /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html I'm confused because our current htaccess file has quite a few (working) redirects that look like this: Redirect permanent /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html This syntax seems to work, but I'm yet to find another Redirect permanent in the wild, only examples of Redirect 301 or RedirectPermanent Is there any difference between these? Would I benefit at all from replacing Redirect permanent with Redirect 301?
Technical SEO | | SamKlep1 -
I have multiple URLs that redirect to the same website. Is this an issue?
I have multiple URLs that all lead to the same website. Years ago they were purchased and were sitting dormant. Currently they are 301 redirects and each of the URLs feed to different areas of my website. Should I be worried about losing authority? And if so, is there a better way to do this?
Technical SEO | | undrdog990 -
Redirect non slash to slash
Hello SEO gurus We have an issue here ( www.xyz.com.au) is having 200 responses www.xyz.com.au and www.xyz.com.au/ ( when i ran the crawl test i found this ) We have been advised to do a 301 from non slash to slash ( as our other pages are showing up with slash ) for the consistency we decided to go with this but our devs just couldnt do it. Error is - redirect loop and this site is a wordpress one Can anyone help us with this issue? Help is much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Pack0 -
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 -
Https redirect when certificate expired
Hi, How do we 301 an https version of a domain to a page on another website when the security certificate has run out? We have 301 redirected the http version but IT stuck on how to do the expired https. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Houses0 -
Htaccess redirect with question mark
Hi I have a problem setting up my htaccess for a specific page that has a question mark in the link, and one that has a space in the link and also a question mark. So I would like 2 redirects in my htaccess like that: www.olddomain.com/page.php?page=pagename1 to www.newdomain.com/newpage1.html www.olddomain.com/page.php?page=page name2 to www.newdomain.com/newpage2.html I have tried with something like this but doesn't work: RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^page.php?page=pagename1 "http://www.newdomain.com/newpage1.html" [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^page.php?page=page name2 "http://www.newdomain.com/newpage2.html" [R=301,L] Could someone tell me what exactly I have to change? Thanks
Technical SEO | | darkanweb0 -
Where does Wordpress store the 301 redirects?
Hi, I've just created a campaign for my new wordpress blog and found 11 301 redirects which I was not aware of. It looks like wordpress has created them automatically. Does any one know how wordpress handles this issues or where are they stored so I can delete them? They are of no use for me. 9 of these redirects point to the same url with an added '/' and are in pages 1 is on a post. I've been changing the permalink and some urls several times and maybe one of these times the Wordpress has automatically created the 301 redirect. But why? I do not want to keep the old url. the last redirect is very strange it goes from http://www.mydomain.com/folder to http://www.mydomain.com where folder is the folder where I installed wordpress. But again, I want no one to type the url with the folder name or even know this folder exists. Any comment on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot, David
Technical SEO | | dballari0