How to redirect visitors to SSL connections

This article demonstrates how to redirect users to secure (https://) web site connections, even if they type a non-secure URL (http://) in their web browser. This article applies to Linux servers using Apache or Apache compatible web servers. For Windows servers see this article.

Redirecting users to SSL-enabled connections

You may want to ensure that visitors to your web site always use a secure connection. To do this, you can use Apache rewrite rules in a custom .htaccess file.

If you use the rewrite rules in an .htaccess file in the web site's root directory, all requests will be redirected to HTTPS connections. Alternatively, you can modify the rewrite rules in a specific directory's .htaccess file to limit redirection to files in that directory.

Add the following lines to the desired .htaccess file to redirect users from a non-secure URL (http://) to a secure URL (https://). 

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]