Redirect http to https, how hard can it be?
summary
A site-wide HTTP→HTTPS redirect is implemented at the app layer and uses pre-render.io for bot rendering; a feature toggle has a hidden flag that excluded bots, so crawler requests hit the old path, get a 301-based redirect and cause pre-render to return 500s. The temporary change flips on production, cache expiry overnight amplifies failures, and one stubborn crawler keeps serving stale non‑existent pages for almost a year. Lesson: test redirects, use 301 cached forever carefully and include bots in toggles.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (3)
related talks
22mThe other side of webapp security
48mOvercoming a million reasons not to be HTTPS only
28mTechnical SEO 101 for React Developers
33mDemystifying discoverable web apps
55mTechnical SEO 101 for web developers
07mTechnical SEO & JavaScript
29mBrowser Security in 2017
40mHTTP Headers for the Responsible Developer