Redirecting to HTTPS

48 March 31, 2021

After setting up an SSL certificate on your website, you can automatically redirect all http traffic to the https version of your website. This article shows how to set up this redirect for your site.

Basic HTTPS Redirection

Follow these steps to enable a general redirect from http to https from your DirectAdmin control panel.

Note: We strongly recommend thoroughly checking your site on https before setting a redirect. You may find some content doesn’t load correctly using https. If this is the case, you should find and correct any “http” hardlinks on your site before setting the redirect. For more information, see our support guide on Handling Mixed Content Errors .

  1. Log in to DirectAdmin.
  2. Navigate to the appropriate user account and select the domain from the drop-down menu at the top of the page.
  3. Under the Account Management menu select SSL Certificates.
  4. Check the box for “Force SSL with https redirect” and click “Save”.

Allow a few minutes for the change to take effect. Then clear your browser cache and visit your site. You should see it redirecting from http to https.

WordPress HTTPS Redirection

WordPress has many plugins that will handle HTTPS redirection for you. We recommend using the Really Simple SSL plugin. See our support guide about this plugin for more info on how to use it.

Updating Google Analytics and Search Console

Google analytics and search console track sites by the full URL (including the protocol) rather than just the domain, so you will need to update your URL in both systems in order to keep tracking data accurately.

Google Analytics
  1. Sign in to your account and navigate to the property for the site.
  2. Navigate to Admin > Property Settings
  3. Under “Default URL” select the dropdown for the protocol and change it to HTTPS.
  4. Click “Save”.
Search Console

In Search Console it’s not possible to update the protocol for the existing property, so you will need to add a new property for the secure site.

  1. Sign in to Search Console.
  2. Click “Add a Property”.
  3. Select Website and enter you exact URL into the text box, e.g. ‘https://yourdomain.com’;. If your URL uses ‘www.’ include that too.
  4. Verify the site using your preferred method.