Redirect HTTPS to HTTP (Without SSL cert)

Question

I was using a SSL Certificate for my website and ranked it highly in search engines. Now the SSL has expired and I no longer want to use it, is there some way to redirect my users to HTTP instead of HTTPS?
What I've tried so far is to make a personal certificate and then added a rule to transfer the users in web.config using this code

<rewrite>
    <rules>
        <rule name="Redirect to HTTP" stopProcessing="true">
            <match url="(.*)" />
            <conditions>
                <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="^ON$" />
            </conditions>
            <action type="Redirect" url="http://{HTTP_HOST}/{R:1}" redirectType="Permanent" />
        </rule>
    </rules>
</rewrite>

This resulted in an error page saying my connection is not safe (Becuse of the bad SSL).

Because of the bad SSL or maybe because the user makes an HTTPS request and gets an non-SSL response. — GolezTrol
They do make a HTTPS-request (Because that's what they see in Google Search). What I need to do is to display the HTTP-site instead until the HTTP-version has ranked up. — Tompina
I know they do an HTTPS request, but the result is an HTTP response (or a redirect to an HTTP url). So, my hypothesis is that the warning is because you are (silently) leaving the secure environment, rather than because of the expired certificate. I'm not sure this is the case, but I just wanted to mention this possibility so you might investigate it. — GolezTrol

Lex Li Lex Li · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-17T00:41:40

Without a certificate, no SSL/TLS connection can be made. Then how can you send a HTTP redirect response with no request over a connection? Thus, it is technically impossible to do so.

You can probably generate a self signed certificate temporarily, which means if the users accept this certificate, they can at least still visit your site, and be redirected by you to HTTP. I am not sure if a self signed certificate works for Google search spider or any other search engine though.

If possible, switch to a service provider such as CloudFlare, who offers free HTTPS certificates. That can resolve your issue without you paying a CA.

Redirect HTTPS to HTTP (Without SSL cert)

1 Answers