Question

Nginx SSL Redirect Domain to Subdomain

Posted on September 27, 2022
Nginx
Asked by Jeff Hicks

Good day,

I am relatively new to this side of development and I am trying to setup domain redirection from, bar.com to foo.bar.com. I bought the domain from GoDaddy and pointed it back to Digital Ocean with NS records.

My DNS records for the site are as follows:

A    *.bar.com
A  foo.bar.com
NS     bar.com ns1.digitalocean.com
NS     bar.com ns2.digitalocean.com
NS     bar.com ns3.digitalocean.com

In /etc/nginx/sites-available/bar:

# Redirect HTTP to HTTPS.
server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;

    if ($host ~* ^.*bar.com$) {
        return 301 https://foo.bar.com$request_uri;
    }

    server_name "~^.*bar.com$";

    return 404;
}

# Redirect SSL domain to subdomain.
server {
    server_name "^bar.com$";
    return 301 https://foo.bar.com$request_uri;

    listen [::]:443 ssl; # managed by Me
    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/icare.invismi.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/icare.invismi.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
}


# Handle HTTPS.
server {
    root /var/www/foo_bar/html;
    index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

    client_max_body_size 20M;

    server_name "~^.*bar.com$";

    error_page 404 /index.html;

    location / {
    }

    listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot
    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/foo.bar.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/foo.bar.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
}

I expect the following to happen:

http://bar.com -> https://foo.bar.com
http://www.bar.com -> https://foo.bar.com

http://foo.bar.com -> https://foo.bar.com
http://www.foo.bar.com -> https://foo.bar.com

https://bar.com -> https://foo.bar.com
https://www.bar.com -> https://foo.bar.com
https://www.foo.bar.com -> https://foo.bar.com

But only these work:

https://foo.bar.com
http://www.bar.com -> https://foo.bar.com

This one displays the default Nginx page.

http://foo.bar.com

What do I need to change to make these redirects work? I’m not sure what to even look up and I’m not sure if my DNS A-records are the problem, or the sites-available config, or the Certbot SSL config.

Any help would be appreciated.

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• September 27, 2022

Accepted Answer

Hi there,

I believe that the following should work:

# Redirect HTTP to HTTPS.
server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;

    if ($host = bar.com) {
        return 301 https://foo.bar.com$request_uri;
    } # managed by Certbot
    if ($host = www.bar.com){
        return 301 https://foo.bar.com$request_uri;
     }

    server_name bar.com www.bar.com;

    return 404;
}

# Redirect SSL domain to subdomain.
server {
    server_name www.bar.com bar.com;

    return 301 https://foo.bar.com$request_uri;

    listen [::]:443 ssl; # managed by Me
    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/foo.bar.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/foo.bar.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
}


# Handle HTTPS.
server {
    root /var/www/foo_bar/html;
    index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

    client_max_body_size 20M;

    server_name "~^.*bar.com$";

    error_page 404 /index.html;

    location / {
    }

    listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot
    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/foo.bar.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/foo.bar.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
}

I’ve just tested it out and it seems to be working OK.

Make sure to take a backup of your current config, and also before restarting Nginx, make sure to run an Nginx config test with nginx -t and only if you get Syntax OK then restart Nginx.

Let me know how it goes!

Best,

Bobby