Hi Reclaim!
I am wondering if there is a way to default an entire Reclaim Hosting account to HTTPS. I’ve seen the topic on forcing individual application installations to HTTPS but was curious if there is now a way to change the settings so that any application/site we spin up automatically defaults to HTTPS?
Grateful for any help!
—Josh
Hi Josh,
This is definitely possible! Follow the https://forums.reclaimhosting.com/t/force-https-for-your-site/239 guide. This will walk you through adding the Rewrite Conditions to that file. Instead of adding the .htacces to public_html as described in the guide, you’ll add the .htaccess to the root of the account. All rules added to that .htaccess will filter through to all sites including any new sites you spin up.
I’ve got a question about this. We have a top level domain – dash.umn.edu – and we create subdomains off of that, such as snackeru.dash.umn.edu.
Is it possible to force HTTPS at the “dash.umn.edu” top level that would then cascade down to all the subdomains automatically? In other words, is it possible to force HTTPS in one place that affects all subdomains?
Thanks!
It is possible, the .htaccess file would be placed at the /home folder on the server and force https for all accounts on the server. The only caution there is that you want to make sure all customers have valid certificates in place since the redirect would remove the ability for any URL to load over http.
Is it a safe assumption that they would have valid SSL certs since they are all automatically provisioned by Reclaim? Or could there be some outliers?
I notice that the rewrite rule to force HTTPS is already in the .htaccess file for dash.umn.edu. dash.umn.edu itself is already forcing HTTPS. Is there somewhere else I need to put the rule for it to cascade throughout the entirety of all the subdomains?
For the majority yes, there are some outlier scenarios. The servers attempt to load a file to confirm DNS is pointed to our server before provisioning a certificate. If there are file permission issues preventing that file from loading it won’t provision a certificate. Also new domains will have a lag time before a certificate is issued (I’ve seen it happen as fast as a few seconds and as long as 15-20 minutes). I can tell you thought that all domains on your server have certificates so you should be fine there. As far as where to put the .htaccess file again it’s at the /home folder as the root user, not within one account. I’m happy to add that for you if you’d like, or if you want to speak more about it I’d recommend opening a support ticket to discuss.
I sent in a support ticket. Thanks.