Redirect Loops & Mixed Content After a Migration
The migration finished, and now the site loops endlessly or flashes "not secure". Both are leftover-state problems — old instructions still running inside a new address — and both are fixed by finding the layer that owns the loop, not by adding another rule.
A redirect loop is almost never one bad rule — it is several layers all trying to help. The server config answers, the CMS settings answer, the CDN adds its own force-HTTPS switch, an SSL plugin adds another, and www-versus-non-www disagree underneath. Each layer redirects to a target another layer immediately redirects away from. The browser gives up and shows ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS. Adding a new redirect rule at this point is not a fix; it is a fifth cook in a kitchen that already has four.
Mixed content is the cousin injury: the page loads over HTTPS but calls images, scripts or styles over HTTP — hardcoded URLs left in content, themes or the database from before the certificate arrived. Browsers warn, padlocks vanish, and some functionality silently breaks. Both problems share a root cause: a migration that changed the address but did not chase every instruction and reference that remembered the old one.
The fix method is a map, not a hunt: every layer that speaks redirects gets listed — server config, CMS, CDN, plugins — and one owner per rule is decided. An actual failing URL is traced request-by-request to see exactly where the loop closes. Canonical decisions (HTTPS yes, www or not) are made once and applied everywhere. Then mixed-content sources are found where they live — the database, the theme, hardcoded content — corrected at the source, and the whole thing is verified with a clean crawl: zero loops, zero insecure calls. One senior developer, async-first, IST timezone; first response inside one business day.
This page sits next to the migrations cluster — loops and mixed content are the two most common after-injuries of any move, and the SEO migration page covers the ranking-protection side of doing the move properly. If the loop only appeared after a host-level SSL change, host involvement is named honestly. And once the site is clean, the maintenance retainer is what keeps the redirect map from quietly growing a fifth cook.
While you wait — the first 15 minutes
- Write down the exact error and one URL that fails — a single traceable loop URL is worth more than a page of description
- Test in an incognito window — if it works there, cached redirects are implicated, which changes the fix layer
- List what the migration changed: host, domain, HTTP to HTTPS, platform, or several at once
- If a CDN or proxy panel is reachable, note (but do not yet toggle) its force-HTTPS and redirect settings — that is one of the cooks
- Do not install another redirect plugin or add rules while the loop is live — stacking more redirect speakers deepens the loop
- Note whether the "not secure" warning is on every page or specific ones — specific pages point at hardcoded content, all pages at a global setting
- Gather hosting, admin and CDN access, then send the failing URL and the migration story with it
These steps make every later fix cheaper. Do them in order, note what you changed, and include the notes in the brief.
What the engagement covers
Scope, stated plainly.
- A full redirect-layer map: server, CMS, CDN and plugin — every speaker named, one owner per rule decided
- The actual loop traced to the closing rule and corrected there, not papered over with a new layer
- HTTPS and www canonical decisions made once and enforced consistently everywhere
- Mixed-content sources found at their roots — database URLs, theme references, hardcoded content — and fixed
- Clean-crawl verification: no loops, no insecure asset calls, on the pages that matter
- The final redirect map documented, so the next migration inherits a plan instead of an archaeology dig
Honest limits
What to do instead.
A one-person senior practice is the right tool for a lot of emergencies and the wrong one for a few. The wrong ones, honestly:
- Ranking recovery from a migration that has been broken for months — that is its own honest timeline on the SEO migration page, not a redirect patch
- Faults inside the CDN provider's own network — their support owns their edge; the configuration layer is what this fixes
- A 24/7 on-call promise — one senior, async-first, first response inside one business day
- Third-party embeds serving content over HTTP — the vendor fixes their endpoints; the honest fix flags and isolates them
- A same-day guarantee for sprawling multi-layer stacks — scope follows the map, and the map comes first
After the emergency: stop the next one.
Every rescue ends with the same question — why was this able to happen? The maintenance retainer exists to make the answer boring: updates applied, backups tested, monitoring in place.
Questions
Asked in emergencies.
Correcting loops and mixed content helps rankings — crawlers waste budget on loops, and insecure warnings suppress clicks. What needs care is that the corrected rules preserve the old URLs' redirects to the right new targets, which is exactly what the map-first method guarantees. The ranking-protection side of migrations more broadly is the SEO migration page's subject.
Caches. Some visitors carry cached redirect answers from before a fix, or hit a CDN edge still holding the old rules, while others get the corrected path. This is why fixes land at the owning layer and caches are purged deliberately — patching at the wrong layer "fixes" the loop for you and nobody else.
No — and this is the one answer worth being blunt about. The loop exists because too many layers already answer. A fifth speaker cannot resolve a disagreement between four; it adds a vote. The durable fix is fewer redirect speakers with one decided owner, which is what the map-and-own method produces.
A single-layer loop is often resolved within hours of urgent-priority work once it is traced. Multi-layer stacks — server plus CDN plus plugin rules plus a domain change — take longer, because the map has to be honest before any rule changes. You get the real scope after the trace, and the trace is the first thing that happens.
Other rescue work
WordPress Emergency Support
Your WordPress site is down, broken, or erroring and it cannot wait for the normal queue. Urgent work is slotted ahead of it — with an honest first response and realistic expectations.
WordPress Hacked Recovery
A hacked site is an incident, not a scramble. Recovery follows a standard sequence — isolate, backup, clean, patch, harden, rescan, monitor — with timelines scoped for realism, not false promises.
Website Takeover — When Your Developer Disappears
Your developer vanished, or the relationship ended badly, and you are locked out of your own website. This rescue recovers access, audits what you actually own, and takes the site back — properly.
WordPress White Screen of Death — Diagnosis and Rescue
The page is blank, the admin may be gone with it, and nothing tells you why. The white screen is almost never mysterious — it is a PHP fatal error hiding in plain sight, and it has a specific, findable cause.
"Error Establishing a Database Connection" — Rescue
That single error line means WordPress reached your server but could not open its database — a dead end with roughly four known doors. Finding which door is the whole job, and each has a different fix.
WordPress Emails Not Sending or Landing in Spam
Contact forms that never arrive, order confirmations in the spam folder, password resets that vanish. WordPress mail failure is an infrastructure problem wearing a plugin costume — and the fix lives at the email layer, not in the form.