No, you only need one RewriteEngine On at the top of your htaccess file

Ideally you would need to put your 301’s below what I have shown above

Also, what are your 301s doing? If you are using them to rewrite to force the https then that could also be causing the error as you could end up in a loop. It sounds like my suggestion might be duplicating what some (or all) of what your 301s are doing

Try removing all your 301s and just use the code I have shown, test that it works and then start adding back in the 301s.

If the 301 is not being used to rewrite one page that no longer exists to a new page then you may not need it.

Feel free to email me a .txt version of your htaccess so I can take a look at what you’ve got - so hard to diagnose in the dark! I won’t be able to look at it til tomorrow though. Email is jamie at motley.co.uk

Thanks Jamie that has to be it! I had changed my 301's to redirect to https so as you mentioned it would cause an endless loop. I will check tomorrow and see what changes I can do. Don't want to spend to much time on this as it made with RSD 1.5 and I will be changing the site to RFF 2.5 (stand alone ) I really like the way it works.

did you get it working as per our email chat Ray?

Hello Jamie,
Had some time and did try what you sent BUT no good same thing as l mentioned. Has to be because I had changed some of my 301's to redirect to https so as you mentioned it would cause an endless loop.
Leaving it only with ReDirect On and the 301's works so I guess will keep that way for now. As I mentioned I will be changing the whole site to RFF hopefully starting after the holidays, my main thing I will trying to do with RFF is a menu in place of menu I have used in RSD.
I really appreciate ALL your help and as mentioned if l ever get across the pond again hope we can share a bite in one of the pubs.
Ray

Did you remove all your 301s as I suggested and use just the code I sent through to test?

I tried adding only the code you sent and after seeing the same problem I was going to start removing all 301's and than re-adding one at a time as you suggested, than yesterday I had a health issue and today got busy with some orders.
Question: If I do remove all my 301's and keep them off if the code works that way - am I defeating my 301 purpose and search engines won't like it??? I will try in a day or two and see how it works.

That depends.

If the 301 is to rewrite an old page (eg abc.htm) to a new page (eg xyz.htm) then you will need to keep that (and make sure the target references https rather than http)

If it’s simply to rewrite http://domain.com/abc.htm and make it https://domain.com/abc.htm link then you dont need that as the code I have supplied you will automatically do that and that is what google will pick up.

This is a more efficient way to achieve what you have been trying to do with long list of 301s and as such is preferable in the eyes of google.

Thanks I understand and will give it another try in a day or two and will let u know how it is.

Cool. Hope you feel better

Hello Jamie from Snowy NJ
Ok have time to work again on the site, have been also looking at Google and what they say about migrating to HTTPS and maybe you or someone else can answer this for me:
"Add 301 or 302 redirects from the HTTP page to the HTTPS page."
No problem as you know have been doing that.
Add a rel="canonical" link from the HTTP page to the HTTPS page.
Back to the help this dummy could use:rolleyes:
Since I have the 4 sites www, non www, https://www and https://non www and the HTTPS://WWW is my PREFERRED one. Do I than actually have to add on each index page in the header ie:
<link rel="canonical" href="https:/example.com" /> ???

Will work on deleting the 301's and see if the loop goes away and than start to re-add back.
One other question: my 301's are actually relative going to absolute url's does that make a difference at all???
Ray