Forwarding SSL domain to another SSL domain, while removing SSL on the first one

[pioneerx01]

I have two domains both running SSL. Let's call them old-domain and new-domain. old-domain is permanently redirecting traffic to new-domain. There are still a lot of links out there to old-domain with https://. If I were to remove SSL from old-domain but keep SSL on new-domain, I am betting that users will be getting some sort of certificate error. Right? Any way around that if I want to remove SSL from old-domain?

[requinix]

If I were to remove SSL from old-domain but keep SSL on new-domain, I am betting that users will be getting some sort of certificate error. Right?

If you were to remove the existing "good" certificate and put in a self-signed "bad" certificate, yes. You can't actually remove SSL and have https work.

 

Any way around that if I want to remove SSL from old-domain?

Nope. Can't have https without SSL. Users have to be able to connect to the server, send a request, and receive the response which tells them to go to new-domain.

[Jacques1]

The whole point of HTTPS is to make sure that the client actually gets the site they requested (or nothing at all). If anybody could simply trigger a redirect to a different site, then the protocol would be rather useless. Just think about it: “You want https://www.paypal.com? Nah, I'll redirect you to https://paypal.phishing.ru instead”. That obviously wouldn't be acceptable.

 

It doesn't matter how many new domains you have: If a client visits the old domain, you either have to present a valid certificate for that domain, or they'll get a big red warning.

 

I strongly recommend that you learn the basics of HTTPS before you take any further steps. Distributing “https://” URLs to a temporary domain wasn't very smart, because now you need certificates for that old domain for the entire lifetime of the content.

 

All you can do now is either get a free certificate from StartCom each year or wait for the Let's Encrypt campaign which is supposed to provide free certificates through an automated procedure.