Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request (WordPress)

Seems many people are getting the WordPress error “Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete”

This is an error that is often difficult to track down so I’ve created this article to offer some suggestions.

 

Server redirecting request via htaccess

First off, this happens mostly when you are altering the way that the domain resolves.  By this I mean, if you want your domain to be

www.pcrepairmansblog.com

and people type in

pcrepairmansblog.com

then you need a redirect to the www version.  In actual fact, this is a good SEO technique but I’ll not go into detail here.

How do you redirect them to the www version? Well, I do this by creating an htaccess rule but the problem is that WordPress can often install using the non www link, especially with Fantastico’s defaults.

To check what you have, go to your WordPress admin back-end and look in the Settings -> General page.  Check that both the WordPress address and Site address are set to the same as your htaccess rules. If not, htaccess tells the visitor to go to the www version and WordPress says ‘No, go back to the non-www version’. This causes a loop and the Firefox error above.

I recently saw a client who did a fresh WordPress install and then he added the ‘Custom coming soon page’ plugin. Immediately afterwards he got the dreaded “Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete” error.  He couldn’t get into the admin back-end and called me out to resolve it.  I fired up the ftp, renamed the plugin directory thus:

/wp-content/plugins/custom-coming-soon-pagexxx

and managed to login to the wp-admin with a shift-refresh of the browser. This rename effectively disabled the ‘coming soon’ plugin and allowed access again.

If this works for you, please leave a comment.

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