Have you seen the message err_too_many_redirects on a page or pages of your website?
Would you like to resolve this?
Sure you would! Read on…
Table of Contents
What err_too_many_redirects Means
It doesn’t take a genius to realise what this error means, but its probably worth breaking it down. Error. Too many redirects.
There is no such thing as “too many” when it comes to redirects (I mean, this error suggests there are, but you could string them together). The problem here isn’t too many, but its more than likely a redirect loop.
Wait, redirect loop? What’s that?!
Let’s use a practical, real world, example. Let’s imagine you have redirection in your site from some old WordPress post. You used to have it at /some-old-url/ but you moved this to /some-new-better-url/ and added a 301 redirect to your site using a 301 redirect in your .htaccess file which looked like this:
Redirect 301 /some-old-url/ http://www.mydomain.com/some-new-better-url/
And you tested this and it worked just swell.
Okay. Now let’s say a few months later, you decided you didn’t like www, so you dropped this. You also redirected the www to the non-www version of your URLs using a redirection plugin in WordPress.
Some time later still, you changed your site to be https not http, and you redirected all http visitors to the https version of your site. You added this using a plugin.
This may create a redirect loop when you visit http://www.mydomain.com/some-old-url/ because your redirects attempt to send you to https, but then you are redirected to http://www.mydomain.com/some-new-better-url/ (without the s in https) which then tries to redirect you to https:// without the www. And so on.
Okay okay… so how to resolve this.
How to Resolve this error
The first step to resolving this error is to find out where all of your redirects are placed, and to make sure they are all stored in the same place.
Don’t have redirection happening in lots of places.
You may have plugins multiple, .htaccess, hosting control panel controls as well as DNS proxy / caching services like Cloudflare all of which can handle redirection. Try not to do this. Put all your redirections into one place (bonus points if this is the fastest place – like nginx.conf!).
THEN make sure you don’t have any conflicts. In the above imaginary situation, you’d resolve your issue simply by changing:
Redirect 301 /some-old-url/ http://www.mydomain.com/some-new-better-url/
To be
Redirect 301 /some-old-url/ https://mydomain.com/some-new-better-url/
Remember to clear your server and plugin caches – and your browser cache
As well as your server and WordPress plugin based caches, which should be cleared after any change, you should also remember that 301 redirects are very likely to be cached at browser level. Clear your browser history, flush your cookies and caches, and try incognito or private browsing to see if your issues are resolved. Even then, I’ve heard tell of redirection being cached at network level too, in some situations, so also try a proxy or VPN to make doubly sure (or a different device – like 4g on your mobile, assuming you didn’t load the site before).
Want us to do it for you?
Silicon Dales can assist with straightening out redirection issues on your website. Get in touch to book assistance.
Leave a comment below if this worked – or didn’t – for you
Let us know how successful you have been or otherwise in resolving this annoying err_too_many_redirects error on your website.