Membership Options Redirect Loop After SSL

Membership options page was created and accessed OK but when I added the SSL custom field to my membership options page but now I can’t access it publicly, I get this loop error in Chrome and Firefox. Any ideas?

Newbie testing, watch out!

This webpage has a redirect loop
The webpage at https://www.HIDDEN.com/HIDDEN-premium/?s2-ssl=yes has resulted in too many redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your computer.
Here are some suggestions:
Reload this webpage later.
Learn more about this problem.

Error 310 (net::ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS): There were too many redirects.

The page isn’t redirecting properly Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept
cookies.

• This topic was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by  Jim Climy.

I think this (the custom field) is redundant? s2member directs to a https Paypal form anyway after submission? Wait maybe not for credit card purchases, maybe only for Paypal checkouts.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by  Jim Climy.

Hi Jim,

If you’re using s2Member Pro-Forms with PayPal Pro to accept credit cards on your site, then you should be protecting the Pro-Forms page with SSL so that credit cards submitted to PayPal are sent securely via SSL. If you’re not using PayPal Pro to accept credit cards on your site, then you don’t need to protect your page with SSL since s2Member will redirect the purchaser to a secure URL on PayPal to complete the checkout.

I suggest trying to access your Membership Options Page via SSL by manually changing the URL to https://, instead of appending the ?s2-ssl=yes to the URL. If you still have the redirect problem, try the same thing with a different (public) page on your site. Can you access any URLs on your site using SSL? If not, then it sounds like you might have a problem with the SSL configuration on your server (in which case I suggest contacting your web host).

When I add https:// to the front of my membership options page, the page seems to lose all its css styling and comes up like unformatted html. Same is true of the homepage. I’ll contact my host if they have any ideas.

OK, I think these are issues with Amazon S3/Cloudfront. The css/stylesheet seems to not resolve (when adding https manually on the site) and is being called on page load from an https. I think the redirect look is probably the same issue, my site’s ssl certificate is being seen as redundant to Amazon’s? I am in unfamiliar territory. Do I need to configure the download options for Amazon CDN even though I don’t plan to offer any downloads in the file/save-as sense (the other sense being the download of webpages for viewing like web browsers do all the time)? Or are there settings in Amazon I need to configure?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by  Jim Climy.

I wonder too could this be an issue with W3 Total Cache settings?

My host tells me they gave the plugin write permissions but I dont have a -logs or -files folder in the plugins folder. How do I make sure those can be created properly?

Not sure if related but a separate topic of mine:
http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/paypal-agreecontinue-sends-to-memb-options/

As I continue to try and troubleshoot this on my own since the lack of replies from support, here’s my latest confusion:

In my own language:
I already have cdn.mydomain.com CNAME directing to something.cloudfront.net. Is it possible to have
> > more than one CNAME destination? S2member added two more distros automatically from the download settings:
> > > something2.cloudfront.net
> > > something3.cloudfront.net

Can I direct my existing cdn.mydomain.com to point to all 3 cloudfront distros? My host tells me that doing so will break things?

Not sure if this will fix my redirect loop or the stylesheet problems.

Hi Jim. Sorry for the delayed response.

Let me see, if you use the s2Member custom field to secure pages in a page that doesn’t load any files from your CDN, do you still get the error you mentioned first?

You may have a plugin that’s causing a conflict, it is a possibility, even the theme. A test you can do is use the default theme and reload the page to see if you get the problem. If not, try deactivating other plugins one by one, and see if check the secured page after each. I’d start with the caching plugin, so you can actually see the difference after each change in your tests.

I hope that helps. :)

OK, I need to test this.

My site is setup with s3 and Cloudfront, prior to s2member for speed. Doesn’t that mean that the whole site loads, at least in part, via CDN? I may be confused over how it works.

Update: my stylesheet loads via the CDN so not sure how I could create any posts/pages not using the CDN….

I created a new page. Gave it title “test” and the force custom field, and same redirect loop error. I disabled the caching plugin and the redirect loop remains. Will try other plugins and theme…

• This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by  Jim Climy.

I disabled all plugins except for s2member. Still the loop.
I switched to twentyeleven theme. Still the loop.

I was going to try to disable my cloudfront distros. But this did not seem to fix which surprised me….

Are we sure the certificate is installed correctly by my host? Even though my host told me the issue is with s2member/Amazon.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by  Jim Climy.

My developer tell me this:

“Here is the error that I received on clicking on a CDN item link.

Technical Details

cdn.mydomain.com uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is only valid for the following names:
*.cloudfront.net , cloudfront.net

(Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain) “

Ah, sorry I had not seen these posts before I wrote my comment on your other thread about this redirection issue with SSL.

cdn.mydomain.com uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is only valid for the following names:
*.cloudfront.net , cloudfront.net

I see. Can’t you use the CloudFront domain, at least in the secure pages, instead of your subdomain?

I could use the CloudFront domain I guess for this page. Hmm, not sure how to do that? Would I need to upload the MYSQL database and php files to my Amazon S3 bucket? Pardon my ignorance on how that all interacts with my site. Can I mask the Amazon cloudfront url still?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by  Jim Climy.

No, only static files go in S3, like the image files. You upload them to the bucket that has the CloudFront distribution and then use the CF URL for it, but not with your domain name.

OK but you said ” Can’t you use the CloudFront domain, at least in the secure pages, instead of your subdomain?” – so I am confused. Don’t I need the page *itself* with my paypal pro checkout form to be https/ssl? So if I want to use the Cloudfront domain for that page, as you suggest, how do I do that? or am I totally lost?

No, the CloudFront domain would only be for files served by CloudFront, that you’re using in the secure page. Your secure page is still the same, but it’s loading a resource from CloudFront, and every resource in a secure page has to be secured too. Your CF hosted files too, but you’re using a subdomain of yours for those, which doesn’t match with the certificate CF uses to serve the files securely.

Hmm. I guess I am not sure how to configure this to make it work harmoniously? I assume I would need to somehow link to my cloudfront domain or remove the cname redirect for just this one page? I am at a a loss. Would it help if I send you the admin login as I will on the other issue?

Yeah, you’d have to stop using the CNAME redirect for CloudFront in the secured page of your site.

You can also try asking Amazon support what they suggest? I don’t think you’re the first person using a CNAME for your CloudFront hosted files embedded in a secured page.

My host tells me they can’t turn off that CNAME for one page, they said “its global”.

Here’s my back and forth with Amazon on this. Not sure if this is getting me anywhere:
https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=356634&#356634

Hmm, does this mean anything? Read it a few times and trying to get my head around:
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/SecureConnections.html#CNAMEsAndHTTPS

Alternate Domain Names (CNAMEs) and HTTPS

If you want viewers to use HTTPS to access your objects, you must use the CloudFront domain name that is assigned to your distribution in your URLs. However, you can add one or more alternate domain names to a download distribution and then:

Use HTTPS when the links to your objects use the CloudFront domain name, for example, https://d111111abcdef8.cloudfront.net/image.jpg.

Use alternate domain names when the links to your objects use HTTP, for example, http://www.example.com/image/image.jpg.

If you want to use both alternate domain names and HTTPS in the same CloudFront download distribution (but not for the same objects), you must create at least one cache behavior for which the value of Viewer Protocol Policy is HTTP and HTTPS (allow-all if you’re using the CloudFront API).

Yeah, the last paragraph is the one telling you what to do, but I’m not familiar with CF to know what it’s actually saying. I don’t know what “cache behavior” is in Amazon. You should google it or ask their support team to guide you, I guess.

So I do have the “HTTP and HTTPS” in my only distribution, so there must be some other steps I need to take?

Does v120622 possibly fix this?

HI Jim,

Is there anything on s2member’s side that needs to be fixed?

You cannot use your own CNAME’s because any CNAME you use will not be secure and will generate mixed content warnings and such.

You must link all your static content via https://yourdistro.cloudfront.net not cdn.yoursite.com
So your settings in total cache should point to there.
That should solve the issue when trying to load your stylesheets when using the https:// prefix.

Also with regards to total cache, make sure you’re not caching and or serving s2members javascript file that is dynamic.

Are you using push or pull orgin in your cdn settings for total cache?

I think the problems your having are to do with your CNAME setup and maybe DNS?.

I saw this statement in another of your posts

I have a subdomain with cname redirect to my cloudfront/s3. My s3 bucket contains portions of wp-content and wp-includes.

Can you explain more in detail how your site is setup and how your using CNAME’s

How many CNAME’s are you using and what and where are they redirecting to?

How are you enforcing the CNAME’s? via plugins, your web host DNS manager or both?

When I add https:// to the front of my membership options page, the page seems to lose all its css styling and comes up like unformatted html. Same is true of the homepage. I’ll contact my host if they have any ideas.

So the redirect problem is solved if you use https:// rather than append ?s2-ssl=yes is that right?

That suggests to me that all your problems are caused by your use of cdn.yoursite.com