Question

How do you redirect HTTPS to HTTP?. That is, the opposite of what (seemingly) everyone teaches.

I have a server on HTTPS for which I paid an SSL certification for and a mirror for which I haven’t and keep around for just for emergencies so it doesn’t merit getting a certification for.

On my client’s desktops I have SOME shortcuts which point to http://production_server and https://production_server (both work). However, I know that if my production server goes down, then DNS forwarding kicks in and those clients which have ‘https’ on their shortcut will be staring at https://mirror_server (which doesn’t work) and a big fat Internet Explorer 7 red screen of uneasyness for my company.

Unfortunately, I can’t just switch this around at the client level. These users are very computer illiterate: and are very likely to freak out from seeing HTTPS ‘insecurity’ errors (especially the way Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 handle it nowadays: FULL STOP, kind of thankfully, but not helping me here LOL).

It’s very easy to find Apache solutions for http->https redirection, but for the life of me I can’t do the opposite.

Ideas?

Answer 1

This has not been tested but I think this should work using mod_rewrite

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on RewriteRule (.*) http://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}