“Too many redirects” when try to redirect site using htaccess

3 comments

1. The problem is with

   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ www.example.net/$1 [L,R=301,NC]
   

   www.example.net is taken as a relative path and not as a different domain.

   This is the reason, why it rewrites the URL http://example.net/some/path to http://example.net/www.example.net/some/path, which again is rewritten to http://example.net/www.example.net/www.example.net/some/path and so on.

   If you want to rewrite from domain example.net to domain www.example.net you must add the protocol (http) as well, e.g.

   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.net/$1 [L,R=301,NC]
   

   Another way to redirect a domain wholesale, is using the Redirect directive

   Redirect / http://www.example.net
   

   ---

   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.(.*)$ [NC]
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ %{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [L,R=301,NC]
   

   Using %{HTTP_HOST} has the same effect, because it doesn’t include the scheme, i.e. http or https. Furthermore, you rewrite from %{HTTP_HOST} to %{HTTP_HOST}, which doesn’t change a bit.

   To fix this, you must prefix the substitution with www. and also a scheme, either http or https. The flag NC isn’t needed here, because you look for any character .* anyway. So the rule should look like

   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [L,R]
   

   Finally, never test with R=301! See this answer Tips for debugging .htaccess rewrite rules for details.

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2. Redirects in the .htaccess File

   The .htaccess file is a configuration file used to modify Apache server behavior per directory on a website/server. This is a user-level configuration file, and only some Apache configurations can be edited here, though redirects are common use.

   You can have multiple .htaccess files that cascade over a series of directories. If you have a .htaccess in a parent directory, and another in a sub-directory they will both affect the sub-directory. In these instances, it is important to remember where you do and do not have .htaccess files, to prevent conflicts between .htaccess files at different levels.

   Below are a series of redirect examples and will aid in identifying redirects in your .htaccess file. These are not the only ways to do these kinds of redirects, but these should show you what the most common redirects look like so that you can recognize them if they are in a .htaccess file you are working with.

   Force HTTPS
   The .htaccess code below first checks if the request came into the server using HTTP or HTTPS. If the request did not use HTTPS, then the configuration will tell the browser to redirect over to the HTTPS version of the same website and URL that was requested before.

   RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
    RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
   

   Force HTTPS: When Behind a Load Balancer or Proxy (CloudFlare/Incapsula/Sucuri/etc.)
   Sometimes you may be using a proxy, like a load balancer or a web firewall, like CloudFlare, Incapsula, or Sucuri. These can be configured to use SSL on the front end, but not use SSL on the back end. To allow this to work correctly, you need to check not just for HTTPS in the request, but also if the proxy passed the original HTTPS request to the server using just HTTP. This following rule checks if the request was forwarded from HTTPS, and if so does not try to redirect an additional time.

   RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} =http
    RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
   

   Force non-www
   This redirect only checks if the website name was requested with www at the start of the domain name. If the www is included, it rewrites the request and tells the browser to redirect over to the non-www version of the domain name.

   RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www. [NC]
    RewriteRule (.*) http://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
   

   Force www
   This last redirect checks if the website name was not requested with www at the start of the domain name. If the www is not included, it rewrites the request and tells the browser to redirect over to the www version of the domain.

   RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
    RewriteRule (.*) http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
   

   WordPress
   The WordPress CMS uses a .htaccess file for rewriting URLs to the index.php file, but it defines the URL of the website as a value in the database. If you do not already know the name of the database that is being used on the site, you can look it up in the main configuration for WordPress (wp-config.php).

   You can also open the file in a text editor and look for these values, but from an SSH connection, you can use the program grep. This gives you more than just the database name, but the database name is the most important for what we need to do next.

   grep DB wp-config.php
   
   define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress_database');
    define('DB_USER', 'wordpress_username');
    define('DB_PASSWORD', 'Password');
    define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
    define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
    define('DB_COLLATE', '');
   

   The wp_options Table
   Once you know the name of the database, you can then look at the options table of the WordPress database to see what the URL is set to in the database. The options table can have any prefix at the beginning of the table name, but it is often “wp_” by default, so the full name of the options table is usually wp_options. The two lines that are important are the home and siteurl lines in the options table. You can find these using phpMyAdmin, or another database management utility, but from the command line, you can also just run the following mysql command.

   mysql -e 'show tables' wordpress_database | grep options
   
   prefix_options
   

   Checking the Configured URL
   From the command line, you can check what the current values of the home and siteurl lines in the options table. The command should send you and output like the example below. The important part is that these match each other under most circumstances and that they are what you expect. If they are not what you expect then you will want to update them accordingly.

   mysql -e 'select * from wp_options where option_name rlike "home|siteurl"' wordpress_database
    +-----------+-------------+----------------------------------+----------+
    | option_id | option_name | option_value                     | autoload |
    +-----------+-------------+----------------------------------+----------+
    |        36 | home        | http://www.example.com           | yes |
    |         1 | siteurl     | http://www.example.com           | yes |
    +-----------+-------------+----------------------------------+----------+
   

   Updating the Configured URL
   The following command will update the two rows of the wp_options table for a given database to a new URL. This command should suit most situations where you need to update or correct the URL configured for a WordPress site. Updating the base_urls configured in a WordPress Multisite is beyond the scope of this article, but would involve updating multiple wp_option type tables.

   mysql -e 'update wp_options set option_value="https://www.example.com" where option_name rlike "home|siteurl"' wordpress_database
   

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3. I had the same problem. The problem was not the rule. The rule was correct but the order of the rules in the .htaccess was not. This is what I had before. Note I am rewriting to non-www.

   #https
     RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
     RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
   
     #remove home
     RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/home
     RewriteRule ^(.*)home$ https://example.com/$1 [R=301,L] 
   
   
    # !IMPORTANT! Set your RewriteBase here and don't forget trailing and leading
    #  slashes.
    # If your page resides at
    #  http://www.example.com/mypage/test1
    # then use
    # RewriteBase /mypage/test1/
    #RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
   
      #301 redirect
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com$ [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
   

   I changed to

    #301 redirect
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com$ [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
   
    #https
     RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
     RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
   
     #remove home
     RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/home
     RewriteRule ^(.*)home$ https://example.com/$1 [R=301,L] 
   
   
    # !IMPORTANT! Set your RewriteBase here and don't forget trailing and leading
    #  slashes.
    # If your page resides at
    #  http://www.example.com/mypage/test1
    # then use
    # RewriteBase /mypage/test1/
    #RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
   

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