SSL cert not detected, and can’t browse dashboard over https URLs

Some things you can do to check:

Does this also happen if you just change the address in the browser address bar to https, then hit enter?

Does your front-end site load over https when you request https://domain.com ?
And if you go to https://www.domain.com/wp-content/plugins/really-simple-ssl/ssl-test-page.php, what do you see?

Thanks for the swift reply Rogier.

If I manually specify https in the browser address bar the front-end loads fine and my browser recognises the presence of the cert. Subsequent attempts to navigate to the dashboard still take me to https://domain.com/not_found

The test page returns:

SSL test page

This page is used purely to test for ssl availability.

#SERVER-HTTPS-ON# (on)
#SERVERPORT443#

#SUCCESFULLY DETECTED SSL#

HTTP_HOST: domain.com
REQUEST_URI: /wp-content/plugins/really-simple-ssl/ssl-test-page.php

• This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by bad_sector.

I think something’s wrong with the server config. It sounds a bit like this issue here:
https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/145119/enabling-ssl-on-wordpress-results-in-404

I’ve just modified the WordPress and Site address URLs in General settings to include https, and it seems to have done the trick.

Great it’s fixed…But it’s strange though. The plugin will change the site URLs automatically when WordPress loads over https. I can’t think of a reason why WP would not be able to load over https, but works when the site URLs are changed.

I haven’t seen this behaviour before either. That’s why it’s set up this way: just reload over https, and the plugin can do the configuring.

It’s certainly successfully redirecting any attempt to view a page over http to https.

I’ll be slowly rolling this out to a handful of sites, some on different web hosts, so I’ll see if the behaviour differs at all.

Thanks for your feedback.

Strangely I do get this message on the plugin detected setup details:

The mixed content is activated, but the frontpage could not be loaded for verification. The following error was returned: CURLE_FAILED_INIT

Another of my sites was free of the previously mentioned issue, but now browsers don’t seem to report that the connection is encrypted unless I navigate to a page other than the homepage.

Debug log states:

** Really Simple SSL debug mode **
** Detecting configuration **
plugin version: 2.4.3
Already on SSL, start detecting configuration
ssl type: SERVER-HTTPS-ON
** Configuring SSL **
testing htaccess rules…
htaccess rules tested successfully.
checking if .htaccess can or should be edited…
.htaccess contains redirect
settings page, per site activation or hsts option change, updating htaccess…
retrieving redirect rules
single site or networkwide activation
converting siteurl and homeurl to https
.htaccess contains redirect

This message only means the plugin’s attempt to retrieve the homepage was blocked (could be security) so the plugin can’t check if the mixed content fixer is active. If you don’t have any mixed content, you should be ok.

As for the homepage not being SSL: is the .htaccess redirect in place? If this debug log is from that site, the .htaccess seems to be inserted, and should redirect all incoming requests to https.

Yep. The debug log confirms the htaccess redirect, and manual testing confirms that redirections are indeed taking place.

I’ve found that browsers don’t seem to report the cert validation in the address bar (on the homepage) while the Autoptimize plugin is activated.

I think I might have to look into the Autoptimize config now.

Maybe the autooptimizer plugin blocks the mixed content fixer from working. If you do not have “data-rsssl” in your websource, the mixed content fixer is not active.

data-rsssl doesn’t appear in my web source, but what I’ve just done is check the image URLs specified throughout the page and manually modified them from http to https and that appears to have done the trick.

It seems to be what someone else tried under the following topic:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/mixed-content-filter-not-working-with-autoptimize-plugin/

Rogier, thank you so much for your time today, your support and patience has been second-to-none.

Hello, same problem here, on Dreamhost also, and same solution, I added https n the SETTINGS pages and it did the trick, but not instantly, I first had to stress being locked outside my website and then miracle, I was able to access it !

In case someone needs it I was able to change the SITE URL and WORDPRESS URL manually after checking this, but I finally didn’t need it:
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Changing_The_Site_URL

Thank you.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by makeonlineshop.

After changing the siteurl, you get always logged out because the cookies are not valid for the domain anymore. That’s nothing to worry about.

Did you try change the siteaddress to https in the browser address bar, then hitting enter? That should fix it in most cases. As soon as the plugin detects that WordPress is on https, it will start configuring the site.