HTTPS Redirection Stopped working

I’m just a user here (not affiliated with cloudflare), but I’ve now switched almost a dozen WordPress sites on Cloudflare over to HTTPS… and I just gave up on getting HTTPS redirection to work. I do have it turned on for all sites in case there is something I missed, but in the end it was just easier for me to use a search-and-replace plugin to update the database and replace all image links. I’d recommend this plugin – https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/search-and-replace/ -it has a backup feature built into the plugin, lets you do a dry run which will list all changes that will be made when you run the replace — so the basic steps I follow are:

a) update site settings in WordPress (under General settings) to https:// rather than https://
b) backup database
c) do a search and replace for the wp-options and wp-posts tables to change https://www.mysite to https://www.mysite
d) if there are other image links that need to be updated I repeat the process, backing up the database

(That database backups before running the replace are very important! Don’t skip that step.)

I did try to get the https rewrite to work, even submitted a support request — but the bottom line is that the system of rewrites is erratic and unpredictable. It’s not that it never works –the problem is that it works some of the time but not all of the time, on some links but not all links. And it turned out to be easier to just fix my sites than to rely on rewrites being done.

I looked at your site, by the way – and it seems that you only have mixed content on the pages with sliders, so you might not even need to do the steps I outlined above. So you might just try to edit the URL’s for the slider images first and see if that resolves the problem. (I actually did do that first on my sites before using search & replace on databases, for any images that were set via theme options like slider images and buttons/banners, etc.)

Thanks @abigailm – appreciate the feedback! Have you ever used the plugin “Easy HTTPS Redirection”? This plugin is supposed to force all non-https content to https and was working fine until I updated Cloudflare and WP db. Tried deactivating the plugin to see if it was conflicting with Cloudflare and vice versa, but nothing seemed to help.

If it comes to manually fixed the URLs, so be it. Thanks again. ??

• This reply was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by Chris.

From visiting your web site, it only looked like a few URLs had to be fixed — I browsed several pages and only saw the problem on the pages with a slider in the header.

I have not used the plugin you referenced because I have been using the Cloudflare “always https” page rule for most of the sites. I did try that plugin when I was having problems with a specific site, but it didn’t work for me (I think because of a conflict with the premium theme used on that particular site)

I just decided that it was easier in the long run to fix the sites that were giving me problems than to be relying on a plugin, because it is always possible that a plugin will have a conflict, or will have some sort of a bug after an upgrade, or will stop working if it is not upgraded to keep up with new versions of wordpress. So even if it takes extra time in the beginning to find all the problems and fix them, in the long run it is less to worry about as I know I plan to keep all the sites using https protocol from now on. (It is faster because it uses HTTP/2 and SPDY, and it improves Google rankings).

Thank you @abigailm! – manually changed non-https images and everything is green padlock now EXCEPT home page (blog). How do I make that secure like the other pages? In the General Settings, I’ve set WordPress Address URL and Site Address (URL) both to https://www.lifestreams.org

UPDATE: Just re-read your earlier notes and realized that I hadn’t set up the “Always Use HTTPS” page rule on the Cloudflare side. That seems to have fixed everything!

Thanks again!

• This reply was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by Chris.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by Chris.

I see the green padlock on your home page now (on several browsers)– so if you aren’t seeing it, try clearing your browser cache.

Also, just a note — the “Home” page link in your top site menu directs to https:// — it doesn’t really matter because it automatically redirects to https:// — but I’m kind of obsessive about those details. ??

How do I direct the home page link to https? As you see in my last message, I’ve set the site in the General settings to Https. Do I need to change something with my registrar? Thanks again.

No, just edit the site menu

In your wordpress admin dashboard, navigate to

Appearance > Menus

See https://codex.www.ads-software.com/WordPress_Menu_User_Guide if you need a short tutorial.

In it’s current form, this plugin attempts to ensure that WordPress is aware if you are using Flexible SSL – this happens without turning on Automatic HTTPS Rewrites. When Automatic HTTPS Rewrites is turned on, Cloudflare will attempt to dynamically replace HTTP with HTTPS where appropriate – however we are very conservative with this behaviour and this will only work on internal or external domains where we are confident the link can be served over HTTPS in a stable fashion. We use data from EFF’s HTTPS Everywhere and Chrome’s HSTS preload list, among others in order to validate this.

If this solution isn’t write for you, you might find @abigailm’s method works great. If you want a less permanent solution, a dynamic HTTP->HTTPS rewriter might work for you. We’ve had luck in the past with the SSL Insecure Content Fixer plugin.

Thanks for the response @icyapril. Since the admin panel is not visible when this plugin is activated, it’s deactivated at the moment. Have you had that issue come up before, and if so, please advise. Thanks!

@clang777,

If you disable “Automatic Cache Management” the admin bar will be re-enabled. In the next update we’ll remove the functionality that disables the admin bar completely.

Thanks,
John

@jwineman

Please have in mind that disabling the admin bar is ESSENTIAL for us using page rules.You could add an additional button next to “Automatic Cache Management” e.g “Page Rules Activation” so the admin bar is disabled when someone uses Page Rules.Disabling admin bar is necessary for security,otherwise there are scenarios that the admin bar is visible from EVERYONE

@linusgr – Disabling the Admin Bar and using Cache Everything to cache anonymous page views isn’t a good idea, there are many vectors for Cache Collisions. By doing this you can leak personal information through vectors like WordPress comment form prefills or bypass logins on password-protected posts. Not to mention any other dynamic functionality by third-party plugins which results in leaking of user info.

If you want to cache anonymous page views, the best way to do this is through a feature called Bypass Cache on Cookie, which allows you to safely use Cache Everything on a WordPress site. For additional information on how to do this, please see:

• Caching Anonymous Page Views at the Edge
• Caching Static HTML with WordPress/WooCommerce

@icyapril

First of all i would like to thank you for the insight of the Cache Everything rule on cases you described above, i had the impression by not caching the backend part of wordpress (wp-admin folder,wp-login.php) i was covered.
I was lucky that in my site i have only a subscription and contact form and fortunately i did not have any issue in my particular case so far.(I am using the free plan)
Unfortunately the feature you are proposing costs 200$/month which is extremely high number for sites that do not sell anything.I would have no problem to purchase this feature as an add-on as i can for the additional page rules but committing to 200$/month for this feature is beyond overpriced according to me.

Again thanks for clarifying the possible issues (regarding front-end) when using the cache everything rule