Problem Description
This problem manifests itself in a few different ways:
- You are unable to log in to WordPress as you are constantly brought back to the WordPress login page despite having entered the correct login details. (Note: with this issue you are not provided with an incorrect login notification -- if you see this notification then this is not the same problem)
- When visiting a page nothing shows up. Your browser might indicate that it is redirecting too many times or that there is a redirect loop. Safari says: "Too many redirects". Firefox says "Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete."
- Visiting any page of your site results in a 500 Internal Server error and the Plesk log viewer shows an error about too many redirects reaching the max of 10.
This means that a redirect is configured in one spot that directly opposes a redirect configured elsewhere, creating a conflict between the two.
Problem Resolution
There are three areas we usually check to resolve issues like this.
Plesk Preferred URL & 1-click web apps
The most common configuration with this type of conflict has to do with mismatched settings for your preferred domain wherein the option for "Preferred Domain" in Plesk does not match how your "Site URL" is configured in WordPress (or similar settings in other web apps). This mismatch creates a redirect loop where the web server is pointing to one option and your web app then attempts to load the opposite. Check out our guide to learn how to set the Plesk Preferred URL.
.htaccess configuration
After setting your preferred URL, if you still have this issue, check out your .htaccess file, as it may have conflicting entries or redirects in it. Here's how:
Using the Plesk File Manager or FTP, save a backup of your .htaccess file by copying it to .htaccess_backup, and then revert it to defaults (at bare minimum for testing) to see if it solves the problem. If that resolves the redirect, you'll need to look through the backup file and try to pinpoint the redirect error. If/when you've found it, comment it out with a # at the start of the line, and copy the backup back to the original filename.
WordPress Plugins or other web app modules
Check your plugin configurations, particularly if you have any redirection plugins, a plugin like Really Simple SSL (that can be configured to force HTTPS or non-HTTPS), or an SEO plugin with redirections confiured within it (ex: Yoast Pro, SEOPress Pro, etc). If you have any plugins like this, disable it, use your caching plugin to clear the cache, clear your browser cookies and cache, then test the results. Once you've narrowed down which plugin it is, you can re-activate it and look for the configuration in the plugin causing the issue.
