Redirecting HTTPS with Namecheap

Namecheap is my favorite domain registrar (if one can have such a thing).

One of the features they offer is free domain redirects. But if the site you’re redirecting previously used an SSL certificate, the browser/registrar handshake screws up somewhere and fails to redirect.

Today, I wanted to share how I fixed that. Let’s dig in!

What’s going on…

Over the last week, I’ve been merging a bunch of websites and content into a single digital garden.

I moved my ADHD ftw! course portal to a GoMakeThings.com subdomain. Go Make Things members now have access to all of my ADHD resources, including my courses on Getting Shit Done, my ADHD Handbook, and my Obsidian Boilerplate. And I added a bunch of content creator resources from my old personal site, too.

After combining things into one site, I wanted to make sure that folks visiting the old sites got redirected to the new ones.

If someone has never visited ChrisFerdinandi.com before, the Namecheap redirect works as expected. But if they have, the browser tries to load the HTTPS version, but Namecheap isn’t setup with an SSL certificate. The redirect fails, and they see a page not found error.

Fortunately, I found a really easy and free fix using Cloudflare.

How to fix it!

First, add your domain to Cloudflare…

1. Log into or create a free account with Cloudflare.
2. Under the Home tab, click the Add a domain button.
3. Enter the domain name, and select the Quick scan for DNS records option.
4. On the Select a Plan page, scroll down and pick the free plan.
5. When the scan completes, scroll down and click Continue to activation.
6. Scroll down to step 3, and copy/paste the nameservers Cloudflare gives you.
7. Log into Namecheap and select your domain.
8. Under Nameservers, select Custom DNS.
9. Paste the Cloudflare nameservers in, and click the check mark to save.

Now, you wait a bit for the DNS stuff to propagate.

Once it does, you can set up SSL redirects…

1. In the left-hand navigation, under Rules, select Page Rules.
2. Click the Create Page Rule button.
3. Add the URL you want to redirect.
   • Note: include an asterisk (*) at the end if you want to automatically redirect paths to their matching path on the new domain.
4. Under Then the settings are:, select Forwarding URL and 301 - Permanent Redirect.
5. Enter the new domain under destination URL.
   • Note: add $1 to automatically append the captured path to the new URL.
6. Click Save and Deploy Page Rule.

Now, visits to your old domain—including those with HTTPS in the path—will automatically redirect to your new site.

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