Plugin Causes 503 Errors, Breaks Site

Hi @radiantfreedom,

Sorry to hear you had such problems!

There haven’t been any reports of such issues, so I’ll need some more info. Preferably a way to reproduce, and some error logs.

Witte logs we can check what happened, and see if it’s something in the plugin or if it’s tied to your server.

If there are steps to reproduce we can investigate the issue on our development environment, which is always the best way to resolve such an issue.

Is your server Apache or nginx?

@radiantfreedom regarding re-activation, if you deactivate the plugin, then delete it, all Really Simple SSL settings will be deleted, which should allow you to start again with a clean sheet. The only thing that won’t be removed (if you choose “keep https”) is the .htaccess redirect, which you could remove manually, and the wp-config.php changes, which can also be removed manually.

My guess is that it was one the these two file edits.

In response to user feedback these aren’t removed anymore if the user chooses the keep https option, because it can break a site on SSL if removed. Adding a third option, to keep the site on https, but leave these entries would make things too complicated for most users I think. Hope this explains the behaviour.

As there hasn’t been further activity here I’m closing the item for now, but if you have more info or feedback on this I’ll re-open it.

The issue started imidiately upon completing a migration from Bluehost to GoDaddy. As soon as the site’s DNS records were updated to get the site’s normal domain to point to the GoDaddy servers and the records had finished propagating, the issue started.

I am unable to use the built in delete function in WordPress to clear this issue as the error kills all access to the domain, with error pages being shown sitewide, including in the admin section. The only option at that point to regain access to the site is to manually delete the plugin’s files via ftp.

I did find the code the plugin adds to the htaccess file, but was unaware code was also added to the wp-config file as well. What code do I need to look for that comes form your plugin?

As I said before, this issue appears to be caused by a migration and the plugin failing to detect changes in server configuration and trying to use the old SSL Cert that’s no longer valid, with NO MEANS for me to tell the plugin to re-do the SSL configuration.

In older versions, I could just re click all the buttons or select to reconfigure manually, however no such option exists now, so it just stays stuck on the old, invalid configuration and the browser starts outputting error pages, preventing access to the site to even take any farther action to correct things.

I think adding a simple button like “Reconfigure SSL” or “Reset SSL” should suffice to clear up such errors within the WordPress interface, as I would have access to the plugin’s settings page for a short while, long enough to click such a button, and force Really Simple SSL to revert to the beginning and behave like the site has no SSL settings imported. Basically creating clean slate whiteout having to have advanced knowledge on every little line of code the plugin adds, and every possible database entry the plugin creates.

The plugin USED to be able to handle situations like this gracefully back when the user had more manual control over it. I think this is a case of making it TOO automated to the point the user has NO OPTIONS for troubleshooting or resetting things when something goes wrong.

Very strange, there is nothing saved in the plugin regarding dns or certificate. So I wouldn’t know what to reset there.

The wpconfig only adds (in some cases) some lines to tell WordPress the site is loaded over https, on load balanced setups.

There’s really not much stored about the ssl, just if it is valid or not, and if it is activated or not.

The ssl logic also isn’t changed much the past years.

It is possible the new server just needed some time to get everything up and running.

I will certainly keep an eye on any further reports, although I haven’t heard of any such issues until now. And there are about two million websites using the >6 version, so I imagine at least one other user should have had the same issue. Nothing has been reported.

Thanks for your input, and I’ll keep an eye on any further developments here.

If there’s anything specific that can be improved it will be added asap.