I get 'Error too many redirects' when visiting my WordPress website

If you have a WordPress website, it is possible that you will encounter the message 'Error too many redirects'.

This error occurs because of a problem with the redirection or forwarding of (a part of) your WordPress website. This can be caused by plugins that use redirect techniques or by an error in the configuration of your WordPress website.

In this article we explain how you can solve this error message for a WordPress website on a TransIP webhosting package.

Check your installed plugins

In our experience, the message 'Error too many redirects' is most often caused by a plugin that uses redirect techniques. To find out which plugin is causing these problems, you can use the article 'Activating and deactivating WordPress plugins'.

The article explains how to deavtivate your plugins and then reactivate them one by one. This way you can quickly find the culprit.

I get the 'Error too many redirects' error when visiting the test URL

If you only see this error message when accessing your test URL, the wp-config.php file of your WordPress website may to be configured correctly.

If you have installed WordPress on your web hosting package via your control panel, we will automatically set up the wp-config.php for you. If you installed WordPress manually or made adjustments to the wp-config.php file yourself, this may be the cause of the redirects.

To resolve this, go to the 'SFTP File Manager' and locate the wp-config.php file within the /www foler. Open the file within the File Manager or download it and open it in a text editor such as Notepad++ or PHPStorm.

I installed WordPress on my web hosting package manually

When you have installed WordPress on your web hosting package manually, add the following lines to the wp-config.php file:

if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_TRANSIP_TRANSURL'])) {

Save the wp-config.php file in the text editor (as a PHP file) and save it or upload it again within your /www folder. Adding these lines will ensure that possible redirect errors are resolved.

I installed WordPress automatically via the control panel

When you have installed WordPress on your web hosting package automatically via the control panel, these lines will be added automatically:

if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_TRANSIP_TRANSURL'])) {
    define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . '.transurl.nl');
    define('WP_HOME', 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . '.transurl.nl');
} else {
    define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);
    define('WP_HOME', 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);
}

If you get the 'Error too many redirects' error in this situation, replace these lines in the wp-config.php file with the following lines:

if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_TRANSIP_TRANSURL'])) {
        $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . '.transurl.nl';
}
define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);
define('WP_HOME', 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);

If you still see the error message after following the steps above, the problem may be more difficult to solve.

In this case you can choose to restore a backup from a moment when the WordPress website was still accessible. You can find how to restore a backup of your webhosting package in this article.

In this article we explained how to resolve the 'Error too many redirects' message for your WordPress website.