IIS HTTP to HTTPS relative redirect

Question

I recently got a SSL certificate for my website and want to redirect all traffic to HTTPS. I got everything to go to https://mydomain.com but if someone enters http://mydomain.com/anotherpage it drops the other page and just takes the user to the home page.

My rule in my web.config file looks like this:

<rule name="HTTP to HTTPS redirect" stopProcessing="true">
  <match url="(.*)" />
  <conditions>
    <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="off" ignoreCase="true" />
  </conditions>
  <action type="Redirect" redirectType="Found" url="https://{HTTP_HOST}/{R:1}" />
</rule>

I also tried https://{HTTP_HOST}{REQUEST_URI} without any success. Can anyone tell me what I need to do to make the website redirect to the proper HTTPS version of the page? I have a feeling it has something to do with the pattern, but I can't seem to figure out the syntax.

Answer 1

You can add the URL Rewrite module to IIS (IIS 7 or higher) which allows you to add create the redirect in a visual way. The module can be downloaded here.

This step-by-step tutorial worked wonders for me and explains that when using this module, all it actually does is add some code to your web.config file as such:

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

Answer 2

I can't comment yet or I'd leave this as a comment under AndyH's answer. The solution was correct, though I hit a single further snag (likely tied to the use of Adobe's Coldfusion server). I wanted to share some further research I had to do for any other unfortunate soul who may run into it.

Once set up, the redirect would always end at this url:

https://xxx.xxx.com/jakarta/isapi_redirect.dll

The fix for this was found in an Adobe thread (https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1034854): I had to change an application pool's settings as follows:

Real site (HTTPS binding only, actually contains code and virtual directories) Application pool's Advanced Settings: Enable 32-Bit Applications : False

Http_Redirect site (HTTP binding only, is a blank shell of a folder with no directories) Application pool's Advanced Settings: Enable 32-Bit Applications : True

---

EDIT: Another detail, tied to query string preservation:

Per suggestion in this post (http://www.developerfusion.com/code/4678/permanent-301-redirect-with-querystring-in-iis/)

Add $S$Q at the end of the domain and make sure the box for Redirect all requests to exact destination is checked. Then it will save the query string as well.