Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
WPEngine Causing Redirect Chain
-
Hi guys,
Had a quick question that I wanted to verify here. After reviewing a Moz report we received some redirect chain error on all of our sites hosted with WPEngine. We noticed that the redirect chain appears to be coming from how the domains are configured in their control panel.
Essentially, there is a redirect:
- from staging/temp -> to live
- from non-www -> to www
- SSL redirect from http -> https
The issue here is that the non-www is redirecting to www and then redirected again to https://www
According to support the only way to get rid of this error is to drop the www version of the domain and to host everything under https://domain.com. To me it seems very odd that you cannot just go from http://non-www to https://www in just 1 301 redirect.
Has anyone else experienced this or am I just not looking at the situation correctly?
-
@AaronHenry This works. i had numerous redirect hops on wpengine. i followed these industructions and my issue went away. Make sure you clear cache when you do this (on the site and wpengine cache)... also make sure you dont have any redirects on the domain or cloud flare dns file level. Remove any redriects of the primary and set www. as the primary.
-
Hi Jared,
In the WPE redirect rule editor, it doesn't provide an option for the non-www domain. Only "All domains" and "www.mywwwdomain.com". What do you suggest doing here to eliminate the redirect chain?
-
Hi Donna,
Thanks for the followup!
This method would work for both www and non-www to get it over to https://. We handle redirects on the Nginx layer, so by adding in a Redirect Rule it overwrites any default platform redirect rules in the User Portal and ensures your preferred setup is handled first.
If you run into any trouble getting it configured, please reach out to us and we'll be glad to ensure it gets set up properly. Should anyone tell you it's not possible, request that they reach out to me and I'll be sure to instruct them on the method to get it squared away.
Cheers,
Jared Arnold -
Hi Aaron,
You're very welcome and I'm glad that you've been overall enjoying the platform!
It's very possible that they didn't quite grasp the request, though it is a bit of an SEO quirk to configure. I'll be following up with some of our team to help ensure our internal documentation's up to date so that should this be asked in the future, we can provide a more consistent experience for you.
Thanks!
Jared Arnold -
Same question but for the www version of the site. Can it route directly to HTTPS without a redirect? Do I just have to delete the existing non-www to www redirect and follow your logic above? It will take care of both www and non-www redirecting to HTTPS?
I have also asked the help desk several times for a solution, although not recently. I was told it wasn't possible.
-
Thanks for this information! All of the support agents I spoke with told me that it was not possible. They were all extremely professional, but perhaps they didn't understand what I was asking. I'm glad to hear there is a way to make it happen. WPE is a great platform for us.
-
Hey Aaron!
Jared from WP Engine here.
I just wanted to reach out and provide a bit of clarification on the redirect chain here. On our platform, it is possible to have non-www go to https://www directly.
To do so, it requires adding each domain individually within the User Portal under 'Domains'. (not combining them under redirects) Once done, you then create a Redirect Rule within the 'Redirect Rules' section with the following parameters:
Name: (this can be anything)
Domain: (your non-www domain)
Source: ^/(.*)
Destination: https://www.yourwwwdomain.com/$1Once configured and the cache purged, a request to the non-www version of your address will skip the http://www redirect and go directly to the secure https://www version.
If you run into any trouble getting it set up, please reach out to our team and we will be glad to help configure it for you.
Thanks,
Jared Arnold -
Just thought I'd shoot an update - according to WPEngine the redirect will always be there. No way around it on their platform.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Redirection chain and Javascript Redirect
Hi, A redirection chain is usually defined as a page redirecting to another page which itself is another redirection. URL1 ---(301/302)---> URL2 ---(301/302)---> URL3 But what about Javascript redirect? They seem to be a different beast: URL1 ---(301/302)---> URL2 ---(200 then Javascript redirect)---> URL3 From what I know if the javascript redirect is instant Google counts it as a 301 permanent redirection, but I'm still not sure about if this counts as a redirection chain. Most of the tools (such as moz) only see the first redirection. So is that scenario a redirection chain or no?
Technical SEO | | LouisPortier0 -
301 Redirects, Sitemaps and Indexing - How to hide redirected urls from search engines?
We have several pages in our site like this one, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions, which redirect to deeper page, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions/work-smarter-not-harder. Both urls are listed in the sitemap and both pages are being indexed. Should we remove those redirecting pages from the site map? Should we prevent the redirecting url from being indexed? If so, what's the best way to do that?
Technical SEO | | HeroDesignStudio0 -
301 redirects delay in picking up
Hi I have been involved in the redesign/development of a website which has up until now had a lot of international traffic. On day of migration I uploaded all the 301 redirects to the website (wordpress) using Simple 301 redirect plugin. I tested a number of them and they appeared to be working. I also submitted the new sitemaps to Search Console. Since migration international traffic - particularly from countries such as india, Phillipines, Sri Lanka etc have significantly dropped off whereas the local traffic and some of the international traffic such as USA has remained fairly consistent. Looking at Analytics and entrances recently it appears as though search results are/were showing a number of pages with 404's (one in particular which received significant traffic and for which I had created a 301 redirection) - I have checked this page using the old url and it re-directs correctly for me and today asked a colleague in India to also check - he is getting the redirection fine. Does Google.in take a significantly longer time to pick these up in search results? Or am I missing something?
Technical SEO | | musthavemarketing0 -
Is there a tool to see all redirects?
I'm thinking this is a silly question, but I've never had to deal with it I thought I'd ask. Ok is there a tool out there that will show all the redirects to a domain. I'm working on a project that I keep stumbling on urls that redirect to the site I'm studying. They don't show up in Open Site or ahrefs as linking domains, but they keep popping up on me. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | BCutrer0 -
Removing Redirected URLs from XML Sitemap
If I'm updating a URL and 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL, Google recommends I remove the old URL from our XML sitemap and add the new URL. That makes sense. However, can anyone speak to how Google transfers the ranking value (link value) from the old URL to the new URL? My suspicion is this happens outside the sitemap. If Google already has the old URL indexed, the next time it crawls that URL, Googlebot discovers the 301 redirect and that starts the process of URL value transfer. I guess my question revolves around whether removing the old URL (or the timing of the removal) from the sitemap can impact Googlebot's transfer of the old URL value to the new URL.
Technical SEO | | RyanOD0 -
How long should I keep 301 redirects?
I have modified a the URL structure of a whole section of a website and used mod_rewrite 301 redirect to match the new structure. Now that was around 3 months ago and I was wondering how long should I keep this redirect for? As it is a new website I am quite sure that there are no links around with the old URL structure but still I can see the google bot trying from time to time to access the old URL structure. Shouldn't the google bot learn from this 301 redirect and not go anymore for the old URL?
Technical SEO | | socialtowards0 -
Double 301 redirect
Hi together, due to some technical reasons I have redirect (301) an existing link two times. Example: www.mydomain.com/root/site.html > 301 > www.mydomain.com/site.html > 301 www.mydomain.com/site_new.html Is there anybody how has got some experience like doing a double redirect? What about link juice? Best regards Steffen
Technical SEO | | steffen_0 -
How to Redirect only specific pages to new domain
My HTACCESS FILE IS AS FOLLOWS: rewriteengine on
Technical SEO | | askthetrainer
rewritecond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com$
rewriterule ^mydomain/(.*)$ "http://www.mydomain.com/$1" [R=301,L] #4d864805b49b5 I want to move ONLY specific pages from this domain to a new domain How do I edit my HTACCESS (which redirects http:// to www.) to move specific pages from old domain (which I have to delete) to new domain.... I.e. http://mydomaon.com/move.html needs to move to http://mynewdomain.com/move.html Where i can delete the original domains0