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I installed a security certificate installed on my website, and want to force all urls to use ‘https’ as well as ‘www’. I updated the .htaccess by uncommenting:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http%{ENV:protossl}://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

However, upon saving, the site was not enforcing either the https or the www. I cleared cache and even restarted the server, and still no change- so I suspect there is a conflict in the file somewhere, but it may be something else as well. What would be the most efficient way to trouble shoot this to get the redirect to work properly? The file is currently as follows:

#
# Apache/PHP/Drupal settings:
#

# Protect files and directories from prying eyes.
<FilesMatch ".(engine|inc|info|install|make|module|profile|test|po|sh|.*sql|theme|tpl(.php)?|xtmpl)(~|.sw[op]|.bak|.orig|.save)?$|^(..*|Entries.*|Repository|Root|Tag|Template)$|^#.*#$|.php(~|.sw[op]|.bak|.orig.save)$">
Order allow,deny
</FilesMatch>
# Don't show directory listings for URLs which map to a directory.
Options -Indexes

# Follow symbolic links in this directory.
Options +FollowSymLinks

# Make Drupal handle any 404 errors.
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php

# Set the default handler.
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm

# Override PHP settings that cannot be changed at runtime. See
# sites/default/default.settings.php and drupal_environment_initialize() in
# includes/bootstrap.inc for settings that can be changed at runtime.

# PHP 5, Apache 1 and 2.
<IfModule mod_php5.c>
php_flag magic_quotes_gpc                 off
php_flag magic_quotes_sybase              off
php_flag register_globals                 off
php_flag session.auto_start               off
php_value mbstring.http_input             pass
php_value mbstring.http_output            pass
php_flag mbstring.encoding_translation    off
</IfModule>

# Requires mod_expires to be enabled.
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
# Enable expirations.
ExpiresActive On

# Cache all files for 2 weeks after access (A).
ExpiresDefault A1209600

<FilesMatch .php$>
# Do not allow PHP scripts to be cached unless they explicitly send cache
# headers themselves. Otherwise all scripts would have to overwrite the
# headers set by mod_expires if they want another caching behavior. This may
# fail if an error occurs early in the bootstrap process, and it may cause
# problems if a non-Drupal PHP file is installed in a subdirectory.
ExpiresActive Off
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

# Various rewrite rules.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on

# Set "protossl" to "s" if we were accessed via https://.  This is used later
# if you enable "www." stripping or enforcement, in order to ensure that
# you don't bounce between http and https.
RewriteRule ^ - [E=protossl]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteRule ^ - [E=protossl:s]

# Make sure Authorization HTTP header is available to PHP
# even when running as CGI or FastCGI.
RewriteRule ^ - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

# Block access to "hidden" directories whose names begin with a period. This
# includes directories used by version control systems such as Subversion or
# Git to store control files. Files whose names begin with a period, as well
# as the control files used by CVS, are protected by the FilesMatch directive
# above.
#
# NOTE: This only works when mod_rewrite is loaded. Without mod_rewrite, it is
# not possible to block access to entire directories from .htaccess, because
# <DirectoryMatch> is not allowed here.
#
# If you do not have mod_rewrite installed, you should remove these
# directories from your webroot or otherwise protect them from being
# downloaded.
RewriteRule "(^|/)." - [F]

# If your site can be accessed both with and without the 'www.' prefix, you
# can use one of the following settings to redirect users to your preferred
# URL, either WITH or WITHOUT the 'www.' prefix. Choose ONLY one option:
#
# To redirect all users to access the site WITH the 'www.' prefix,
# (http://example.com/... will be redirected to http://www.example.com/...)
# uncomment the following:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http%{ENV:protossl}://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
#
# To redirect all users to access the site WITHOUT the 'www.' prefix,
# (http://www.example.com/... will be redirected to http://example.com/...)
# uncomment the following:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.+)$ [NC]
# RewriteRule ^ http%{ENV:protossl}://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

# Modify the RewriteBase if you are using Drupal in a subdirectory or in a
# VirtualDocumentRoot and the rewrite rules are not working properly.
# For example if your site is at http://example.com/drupal uncomment and
# modify the following line:
# RewriteBase /drupal
#
# If your site is running in a VirtualDocumentRoot at http://example.com/,
# uncomment the following line:
# RewriteBase /

# Pass all requests not referring directly to files in the filesystem to
# index.php. Clean URLs are handled in drupal_environment_initialize().
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]

# Rules to correctly serve gzip compressed CSS and JS files.
# Requires both mod_rewrite and mod_headers to be enabled.
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
# Serve gzip compressed CSS files if they exist and the client accepts gzip.
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-encoding} gzip
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.gz -s
RewriteRule ^(.*).css $1.css.gz [QSA]

# Serve gzip compressed JS files if they exist and the client accepts gzip.
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-encoding} gzip
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.gz -s
RewriteRule ^(.*).js $1.js.gz [QSA]

# Serve correct content types, and prevent mod_deflate double gzip.
RewriteRule .css.gz$ - [T=text/css,E=no-gzip:1]
RewriteRule .js.gz$ - [T=text/javascript,E=no-gzip:1]

<FilesMatch "(.js.gz|.css.gz)$">
# Serve correct encoding type.
Header set Content-Encoding gzip
# Force proxies to cache gzipped & non-gzipped css/js files separately.
Header append Vary Accept-Encoding
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>
</IfModule>

Bonus question (and thank you for making it this far!)- I downloaded a copy of Drupal to replace the htaccess file in case there was an issue, and it came unformatted, while the version that had been installed is certainly easier to read as it is formatted nicely w/ breaks and such. I’m assuming there’s a trick to viewing the file so it is not crunched together- but any insight on that would be greatly appreciated!

**Formatting was indeed notepad- once dropping into sublime it worked as expected, thanks to msg.

**Update to issue:

Thank you msg – so with your comment about working out of the box, I decided to redownload the same version of Drupal and copied over the htaccess file, then uncommented as before, and added the 3 lines of code just below “RewriteEngine” – www is now properly working, but the force to use secure is still not. the section of relevant code (as far as I can tell) is:

# Various rewrite rules.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} !https
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

# Set "protossl" to "s" if we were accessed via https://.  This is used later
# if you enable "www." stripping or enforcement, in order to ensure that
# you don't bounce between http and https.
RewriteRule ^ - [E=protossl]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteRule ^ - [E=protossl:s]

# Make sure Authorization HTTP header is available to PHP
# even when running as CGI or FastCGI.
RewriteRule ^ - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

Are the lines added potentially conflicting with other code that was uncommented?

2

Answers


  1. Chosen as BEST ANSWER

    Thank you for your help @msg. Unfortunately in my case that I ultimately ended up using iis to redirect, which I noticed only updated settings.config. If you have any insight on what connection there might be there I'd be very interested to hear it though.


  2. The default .htaccess should work out of the box, so I’d begin with the checklist:

    • Verify that mod_rewrite is loaded: apache2ctl -D DUMP_MODULES
    • Make sure that .htaccess files aren’t forbidden: There is no AllowOverride None in the server configuration.
    • Enable rewrite log

    As for the formatting, looks like the editor doesn’t show line feeds properly. Notepad by any chance?

    EDIT: Upon having a second look, this doesn’t actually redirect to the https version of the page, just makes sure that keeps the same protocol as the original request. Try adding this after RewriteEngine on:

    RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
    RewriteRule ^ https://www.yoursitehere.com [R,L]
    

    EDIT2: It shouldn’t, but I’ve a couple of things to point out:

    • X-Forwarded-Proto could be causing problems if it’s not set. If you don’t have a loadbalancer or proxy, try commenting it out.
    • I have sometimes encountered instances where %{HTTPS} isn’t set and I resorted to using %{SERVER_PORT} o %{SERVER_PROTOCOL}.

    I’m not sure if it’s a bug or just behaviour dependent on apache version. This is where some debugging or trial and error comes in.

    Other than that, some of the rules are now a bit inefficient. Let’s have a look:

    RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} !https
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
    

    This checks if the request came via regular HTTP and if that the case, it redirects to https in whatever ServerAlias the request came in and stops further processing ([L]). This is the perfect opportunity to redirect to a canonical version.

    You still have to check if the request came in via the canonical version, just in case, as it’s done in the block:

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.
    

    That would cause another redirection for the client.

    Or you could combine that Cond with ours with [OR] flag and be done.

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