Cloudflare “Too Many Redirects”, Redirect loop errors prevent visitors from viewing the website.

As part of our Server Management Services, we assist our customers with several Cloudflare queries.

Today, let us see how we can fix this error.

Cloudflare “Too Many Redirects”

Most often, there are two typical causes of this error. They are;

1. Cloudflare SSL options that are incompatible with the origin web server’s configuration, and
2. Page Rule misconfiguration.

Generally, we receive the following messages in the browser when the error occurs:

1. The page isn’t redirecting properly

2. ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS

Moving ahead, let us see how our Support Techs resolve this in both scenarios.

• Cloudflare SSL options incompatible with the origin web server

When we enable the Flexible SSL option, Cloudflare sends requests to the origin web server unencrypted over HTTP.

If the origin web server is configured to redirect all HTTP requests to HTTPS when using the Flexible SSL option, Redirect loops occur.

Another scenario is the usage of the Full or Full(strict) SSL option. This will also lead us to the error.

Moving ahead, our Support Techs recommend one of the following steps to fix this error.

1. We can remove the HTTPS to HTTP or HTTP to HTTPS redirects from the origin web server configuration.

For example:

Apache – RewriteRules

nginx – Rewrite directives and 301 return directives

2. Or on the other hand, we can update the Cloudflare SSL option in the SSL/TLS app Overview tab:

If it is set to Flexible, and we have an SSL certificate at the origin web server, we can update it to Full.

Similarly, if it is set to Full, we can update it to Flexible. However, our Support Techs do not recommend this.

• Page Rule misconfiguration

If we configure two conflicting Page Rules with Forwarding URL settings, it causes redirect loops.

For example, a Page Rule redirects traffic for a.bob.com to b.bob.com, and another redirects traffic for b.bob.com to a.bob.com.

In order to confirm if we have two rules to forward traffic to each other, we can check the rules in Rules > Page Rules.

To reduce this, WordPress users can install the Cloudflare WordPress plugin at their origin web server.

In addition, they can enable the Automatic HTTPS rewrites option within the plugin.

Alternatively, Cloudflare recommends the SSL insecure content fixer or Really Simple SSL plugin.

[Need further assistance? We are here for you]

Conclusion

In short, we saw how our Support Techs fix the Cloudflare error for our customers.