How to fix WordPress Error ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS [Detail Guide]

ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS – This is a nightmare for any WordPress website owner, this error is also known as a redirect loop error.

This ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error may occur due to several reasons like wrong settings with third-party services, a certain misconfiguration of redirects on your server, or even a recent change on your WordPress site.

ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS is one of the most annoying as well as frustrating errors. But you no need to worry anymore, as with proper guidance and knowledge you the solve the issue within a few minutes. Thanks to WordPress that will help you to troubleshoot and get the error fixed in no time.

But before jumping off and getting the error fixed, first, let us know and get complete detail about “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS”, so that next time we can prevent our self from falling into this error.

What is the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS Error?

ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS or also known as a redirect loop error means that the website you are trying to visit is being redirected to several web addresses in a way that it will never get completed, in another way the website is experiencing a never-ending redirect loop.

For example: Suppose you are trying to visit a website with URL1, but URL1 is redirected to URL2 and URL2 is again redirecting to URL1 or that particular domain has redirected too many times, as a result, the website won’t able to produce any output. This causes an “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error on your website.

You might see a couple of different variations of this error depending upon the browser you are using to visit the website, only the difference will be in place of “xxxxxx.com” you will see the domain name of your website:

Google Chrome:

In Google Chrome, this error shows something like “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” or “This webpage has a redirect loop problem”.

“This page isn’t working. xxxxxx.com redirected you too many times.”

Safari:

In Safari this error shows something like “Safari Can’t Open the Page”.

“Too many redirects occurred trying to open “xxxxxx.com.” This might occur if you open a page that is redirected to open another page which is then redirected to open the original page.”

Mozilla Firefox:

In Mozilla Firefox this error shows something like “This page isn’t working right now”. 

“xxxxxx.com redirected you too many times.”

Microsoft Edge:

In Microsoft Edge, this error shows something like “The page isn’t redirecting properly”.

“An error occurred during a connection to xxxxxx.com. This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies.”

Why Am I Getting an ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS Error?

So, why am I getting an ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS Error? Hmm, that’s a good question.

Let me tell you one thing that redirects error is a relatively minor issue, but those who don’t understand what the “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error actually means can drive them into deep trouble. It is one of the most common errors for any WordPress website.

The list below contains some of the common reason that might make your website to experience an “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” errors are:

• Incorrect WordPress settings configuration
• Incorrect .htaccess file configuration
• An issue with your web server
• Certain changes that have produced a conflict with your plugins
• Certain changes that have produced a conflict with your theme
• Certain changes that have produced a conflict with your WordPress Core files

A step-by-step guide to Fix ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS

As you know analyzing and resolving the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error is one of the trickiest and confusing tasks in WordPress.

So, we have provided a step by step guide to detect and fix this error within a few minutes. Please go through the following step to get rid of the “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error from your website.

Delete Browser Cookies:

Cookies are small basically pieces of website’s information that contain bits of text which are stored on your computer. Sometimes these cookies may contain some faulty data that can provide you an “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error.

Among all others, Google Chrome and Mozilla both are the most common browser used nowadays. Though different browsers have different settings for clearing or deleting cookies from their browser.

But don’t worry, whatever browser you are using, you can clear their cookies by going through the following steps:

How to Force Refresh a Single Page in any web browser: Force Refresh is a technique, where you can delete all the cookies, cache of a particular website. When a Force Refresh technique is applied, it displays the website on your web browser by downloading a new version of the cache from the source and deleting all the previous cache that was stored on your system.

So, to force refresh a website, you just need to open the website in your web browser and the following hotkeys will let you apply a force refresh for any particular website:

• For Windows and Linux web browsers: CTRL + SHIFT + R
• For Apple Safari: SHIFT + Reload button
• For Chrome and Firefox for Mac: CMD + SHIFT + R

Delete Browser Cookies from Google Chrome: In Google Chrome click on the three dots that you will find in the upper right-hand corner of your browser. Now on the sub-menu, click the “Setting”.

Then, scroll down and click on the “Advanced” tab, then click on the “Site settings” option to delete cookies of a specific site or click “Clear Browsing Data” to delete all the cookies from your browser.

Delete Browser Cookies from Mozilla Firefox: To delete cookies from Mozilla Firefox, click on the menu in the upper right corner and then select Option.

Now select on the “Privacy” tab and click on “Clear your recent history” for clear all the history, cookies, cache and other stored data for a “Time Range” or “Everything”. You can also delete history, cookies, cache and other stored data of a specific site also, simply just by selecting “Remove Individual Cookies”.

Delete Browser Cookies from Safari: To delete cookies from Safari, select the “Preferences” option from the menu and go to the “Privacy” tab. Now click the “Remove All Website Data” to remove all stored website data on your browser, or click the “Details” option to remove stored data of a specific website.

Delete Browser Cookies from Microsoft Edge: To delete cookies from Microsoft Edge, click the three dots that you can locate in the upper right-hand corner of your browser. Now, scroll down the side menu and click on “Choose what to clear” to delete cookies. You can also use the shortcut: CTRL + SHIFT + DEL.

Delete Browser Cookies from Internet Explorer: To delete cookies from Internet Explorer click Tools or the Gear Icon that you will find in the upper right-hand corner, then hover on the “Safety” and click “Delete browsing history” from the sub-menu.

You can also use the shortcut, by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + DEL, which will pop up the “Delete Browsing History” dialog box.

Delete Browser Cookies from Opera: To delete cookies from Opera, click the Opera icon that you can locate in the upper left-hand corner of your browser and click or hover on the More Tools option.

Now, click “Clear browsing data” from the submenu, which also has a shortcut: CTRL + SHIFT + DEL, then you can choose your options to delete your cookies.

Clear WordPress Cache:

If deleting your cookies from your browser doesn’t help, then the next step that you should try is deleting your own WordPress cache.

Maximum WordPress website owners use a cache plugin to speed up their WordPress website. And if you are one of them, then you can try to resolve the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error with the help of that cache plugin.

As in some cases, you might still be able to reach your WordPress admin area or the backend of your WordPress website during an ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error.

In that case, if you are using any kind of cache plugins you should log in to your WordPress admin area or the dashboard and should immediately try to delete the cache of your WordPress website. Thereafter, reload your website to see if the RR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error is fixed or not.

Disable and Re-Activate Plugins:

If you are facing the “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error immediately after some change in a plugin or after update of any plugin – that might be the cause of your error. An outdated or corrupt plugin can often provide an invitation to errors on your website.

For example, some plugins like Redirection, Rank Math or Yoast SEO helps you in decreasing the 404-page error from your visitors by letting you implement redirects on your website.

So sometimes few settings changes or updates made to these plugins can create conflict with the redirects that you have already set on your server, resulting in a redirect loop or the “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error.

The best way to fix this problem is to log in to the cPanel of your hosting provider and open File Manager. Then go to the root folder of your WordPress website, locate the WP-content folder and rename the plugin folder like old_plugins, plugin_, and so on.

By renaming your plugin folder you can disable all the plugin from your website. Now, refresh the website and verify whether the error is solved.

If you don’t see the error anymore, then you need to rename the plugin folder to its previous name that is “plugins” and you will need to test each plugin by renaming its name one by one.

In order to test each plugin, you have to now enter in the plugin folder, rename the first plugin -> refresh the page to verify the error -> if solved delete the plugin and install a fresh one, and if the problem is not solved repeat the process again with the next plugin.

Changing your URL options:

One of the most common reasons for which you might be facing an “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error or a redirect loop is because of your URL settings, where the home URL and website URL doesn’t match.

Many WordPress developers or advanced users want WordPress to power their website’s root, but they don’t want all of the WordPress files cluttering up in their root directory.

So, WordPress has provided an option where they can install it into a subdirectory. But by default, WordPress uses the same URLs to avoid any kind of errors and confusion.

Changing URL Settings from WordPress Dashboard: If you are able to login to your WordPress Dashboard, go to “Settings” from the sidebar and check your “WordPress Address (URL)” and “Site Address (URL)”.

If the URLs are not entered correctly then update the URLs and make sure they configured correctly, and lastly click the “Save Changes” button to save all your changes.

Changing URL Settings of a WordPress Website Manually: If you are not able to login to your WordPress Dashboard to change your URL Settings – don’t panic, we can do it manually. To do that, firstly login to the cPanel of your web hosting and with the help of File Manager go to the root folder of your WordPress website.

Locate the wp-config.php file and open it with a code editor. After opening the wp-config.php file, you need to add two lines of code as given below:

define ( 'WP_HOME' , 'http://yourwebsitename.com' );
define ( 'WP_SITEURL' , 'http://yourwebsitename.com' );

Only replace http://yourwebsitename.com with your own website address and save the file. Now visit your website to verify whether the URL change has fixed the “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error or not.

Check HTTPS Settings:

One of the common reasons behind an “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error might be your HTTPS setting. If you have recently migrated your WordPress website from HTTP to HTTPS and after the migration, you are facing the issue then something has gone wrong while configuring your SSL or your SSL certificate has expired.

First of all, don’t force HTTPS to your website without installing a valid SSL Certificate. For that, you can buy an SSL certificate from Comodo or even use a free SSL certificate like Let’s Encrypt to secure your WordPress website.

You might also like to use some free tools like the SSL Server Test tool from Qualys SSL Labs to verify and make sure that your SSL certificate, as well as the website address, are working correctly.

Though there are some free WordPress plugins like Really Simple SSL that can help you to automatically redirect your website to HTTPS, we don’t recommend this method as it is not a permanent solution. As third-party plugins can bring another set of problems and compatibility issues along with itself.

Check Third-Party Services:

Another most common factor behind getting an “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error is when you are using a reverse-proxy service such as Cloudflare. Especially when their Flexible SSL option is kept enable and on the other hand you already have a valid SSL certificate installed with your WordPress host.

Because when you activate the Flexible SSL option, all the requests that come to your hosting server are sent over HTTP. But as you have already installed a valid SSL certificate with your WordPress host, it will redirect all the requests from HTTP to HTTPS. Thus, performing an “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error.

So, to fix this issue you must change the Cloudflare SSL/TLS encryption mode to Full or Full (strict). In order to change your Cloudflare SSL/TLS encryption mode to Full or Full (strict), you simply need to login to your Cloudflare account.

Now, select the website you want to change the encryption mode and click the SSL/TLS option. On the right-hand side, you can find and change your SSL/TLS encryption mode to Full or Full (strict).

Checking the .htaccess file:

Sometimes, your .htaccess file can lead you to an “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error, if it is corrupted due to some wrong codes or setting implemented to your .htaccess file. In order to get rid of this issue, you need to first locate the root folder of your website with the help of cPanel.

By default, .htaccess will be not invisible in your cPanel, so you have to go to the Settings on the upper right menu and tick or check the Show Hidden Files option to make your .htaccess file visible.

Now deactivate your .htaccess file by renaming it to any other name like .htaccess_old, .htaccess_previous, etc. Finally, create a fresh new .htaccess file and enter the code given below, then save the file:

# BEGIN WordPress 
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c> 
RewriteEngine On 
RewriteBase / 
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L] 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d 
RewriteRule . /index.php [L] 
</IfModule> 
# END WordPres 

Determine the Nature of Redirect Loop:

If you are still facing the same “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error after implementing all the steps properly, then you might try to determine the nature of your redirect loop. A free online Redirect Checker tool can help you to further analyze your website redirect issue.

You can also use the Redirect Path – a Chrome extension that provides all the insights of the redirects happening on your website, it can also check the redirect issues even for a specific URL or page.

For that, you simply need to click on “Add To Chrome”. And whenever the plugin detects any redirects or errors, the icon will change and on clicking the icon it will show you further details, including the full redirect chain.

How to Avoid “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error in the Future?

It’s always stressful whenever your website falls into this kind of issue, but no one can guarantee a 100% fail-proof technique that could protect your WordPress website from an “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error.

But yes, you can at least take some precautions that can prevent your website up to some extent. To do that, you need the two most essential elements:

Good Web Hosting: First and the most important backbone behind any well-known WordPress website is its web hosting. If your WordPress website is hosted with one of the best Web Hosting providers, then you are in a safe hand.

A good web hosting provider can provide your WordPress website several benefits. And the one thing that will benefit you a lot is their premium and fast support, which would cut down half of your technical issues.

Just for an example: if you are facing an “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error and you have tried all the possibilities that could fix it, but still didn’t work. Then don’t worry just give a chance to your web hosting support team, they will definitely solve the issue – if you are using a good web hosting.

But for that, you need to wisely choose your web hosting, as there are several web hosting providers in the market and each one claiming to be the best one. So, you need to have a basic idea about your website like your traffic, the complexity of your website and so on to choose the best web hosting for your WordPress website.

You also need a good idea about the other web-hosting providers, like what benefits are they providing, what are their different plans, which plans suits your needs, where are their server location, what are their downtime and so on.

Best Back-up Plugin: At the very moment you got hit from the “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error, I am sure the first thing that you wish you had backups of your website.

It is very important to keep your website back-up at a specific interval of time, which could save you a lot of time and energy when an error hits your’s website.

There are few back-up plugins, available both in premium version as well as a free version that can take your website back-up including your database automatically at a specific interval of time. Choosing and installing the right backup plugins for your WordPress website can avoid any technical bug that may occur in the future.

Once you have taken a complete back-up of your WordPress website including all the media files, posts, pages, and databases, you can restore it at any point in time just by a few clicks. So, in the future, whenever you get any technical glitch due to a new update, or any custom code – you can restore your website to its previous stage within a few minutes.

UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin is one of the best Back-up plugins that you might consider to use on your WordPress website. For more betterment of your WordPress website, you might consider checking out some of the Best WordPress Plugins that can keep your WordPress website safe and secure, preventing you from getting any error and keep your website up and running.

Conclusion:

Getting an error on the website is always stressful and the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS is definitely one of the most annoying errors of all. So, if you have got hit with this error, follow the steps that we have provided, and you will be able to fix it really quickly. And to avoid these types of issues in the future, we will recommend you to use a good back-up plugin for your website.

So, you have got a brief idea about how to solve the “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error and also how to avoid it in the future. Please share this article to help others to archive their online goals and let us know if you are still struggling with this error anymore.

Thanks in advance.

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