Home/ Questions/Q 9170317
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-06-17T16:00:01+00:00

So, here is the situation: We are running a website which is powered by

  • 0

So, here is the situation:

We are running a website which is powered by Drupal. Sometime ago, it was decided that the website should be served as SSL. The settings to redirect the site from http to https was done by a guy who is not with us anymore.

I can see in the .htaccess file the following lines

#Redirect http to https
RewriteEngine On  
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://docs.dev.domain.com/$1 [R,L]

mydomain.com points to the root of the LAMPP server and my site is in a folder inside the webroot (docs.dev.domain.com/mysite).

Now, it has been decided that the SSL is not needed and it has to be removed and all the pages must be served via http (301 redirect).

When I do that in the .htaccess file by using the RewriteRule to redirect a URL (e.g. https://docs.dev.domain.com/mysite/content/book) to http when a user visits https by using:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]


#Redirect HTTPS to HTTP
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$
#RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://docs.dev.domain.com/mysite/$1 [R=301,L]
#even tried this - RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://docs.dev.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

but it redirects every request on https to http://mydomain.com/mysite/index.php (even the urls like (https://docs.dev.domain.com/mysite/content/book/1 which should ideally be redirected to its http counterpart).

How can I remove the https so that my dynamic URLs are served via plain http?
Sorry if this is very novice problem.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    This is happening because you have a routing rule before the redirect. The rewrite engine will loop until the URI comes back unchanged, and at that point, it evaluates if the URI needs to be passed onto other modules in order to handle redirecting or proxying.

    That means your request is getting routed to index.php, then the rewrite engine loops, then it sees that the request (which at this point is simply /index.php) needs to be redirected, so the request gets flagged to be redirected. Then mod_rewite redirects, but by now, the URI is mangled by your routing rule.

    You need to swap the order:

    RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://docs.dev.domain.com/mysite/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
    • 0