Did ERR TOO MANY REDIRECTS appear on your screen or did you just add Cloudflare for your domain? Cloudflare can be an advantage to your website in many ways. Cloudflare helps to speed up your website performance & adds security for your website. Cloudflare is basically a CDN ( Content delivery network ) that stays in the middle, between your domain & web host. You can learn about Cloudflare from their website pretty much.
Today in this article, I am going to guide you on how you can fix a website redirect loop after enabling Cloudflare for your domain. In simple language, this is how the error looks like “The page isn’t redirecting properly” or “ERR TOO MANY REDIRECTS” errors.
Understanding Cloudflare Err Too Many Redirects loop
The figure below will show how your Cloudflare dashboard looks like when your domain is activated at Cloudflare.
When your domain is activated at Cloudflare. Cloudflare adds SSL for your domain. Cloudflare has a Flexible SSL that can cause redirect loops depending on certain configurations in the origin server. SSL refers to ( Secure Sockets Layer ) which basically is an extra security layer for your domain. To make this simple we say, with flexible SSL, all traffic between the web browser and Cloudflare is encrypted over HTTPS ( HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure ) which replace HTTP ( HyperText Transfer Protocol ) for your domain as a result.
But, we understand you didn’t get to see this change because you got redirect loop after enabling Cloudflare.
Let’s go to the fixing method now. There is a simple matter to fix and solve the redirection loop after enabling Cloudflare.
Cloudflare recommends Flexible SSL only when encrypted traffic cannot be supported at the origin web server because it lacks an SSL certificate. By enabling Flexible SSL, you are telling Cloudflare to send all requests between Cloudflare and the origin web host over HTTP ( not encrypted ). Since this can be confusion between the Cloudflare & your host. To solve this confusion between host & Cloudflare do kindly follow the steps below.
- Go to Crypto ( Lock icon at top ) at Cloudflare dashboard
- Look for the SSL option, you will see ( Flexible SSL ) selected.
- Change flexible SSL option to Strict SSL
- Done!
Now, wait for a while and refresh your website. The issue of the website redirect loop will be solved after enabling Cloudflare. Your website will work fine. But this is not an end. Scroll the Crypto page at Cloudflare dashboard you will see an option called ” Always use SSL “. Check/Enable this option if this is disabled previously.
It might take a few hours to actually solve the redirect loop but this should be fixed usually with-in a few minutes. If you still have this problem after a few hours. You must go with another troubleshooting problem too. There are also other ways to troubleshoot this issue but it can be a little complicated for basic users.
We can remove the HTTPS redirects in our origin server through rewrite rule. Make sure you go with the documentation below.
- Apache Server: Rewrite rule
- Ngix Server : Rewrite directives & 301 return directive
Conclusion,
These stuffs can be complicated for many users. We always recommend using good web hosting to host your applications & websites. We at themebeez.com always would like to recommend users to use good host with best support option. If you ask us for the best web hosting with the great support we will for sure recommend SiteGround.com web hosting service. They have a 24/7 ticket, chat & phone support system which is the best option for every user. Their cost is fair when compared to other hosting services providers. Make sure you check SiteGround web hosting packages.
Do kindly drop your comments below if you ever had faced ERR TOO MANY REDIRECTS problem. Let us know if you need any help with selecting a web host for you. If you have time & looking for the best free WordPress themes then you must check our collection too.