In this creative guide, you'll learn all about the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS Error including what it is and practical ways to fix the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS Error.
While working online, we come across a plethora of errors here at Creative Designs Agency. One of these errors is a redirect loop called ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS.
It appears on most of the popular web browsers, usually caused by a misconfigured website. However, there are some steps you can take to ensure the issue isn’t on your side.
What is the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error?
The error message “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” is displayed on the screen when the browser can't connect a web page and the next in a chain of automatic redirects. There are several reasons for that, ranging from cookies to plugins.
The ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS message (also known as a redirect loop) can make the user feel confused, but it’s only a warning from the browser. It states that it’s not possible to reach the requested page.
Unlike some other browser errors, this one most likely won’t go away on its own and requires you to do some troubleshooting. The issue can be both client or server side.
The reason for ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS is pretty much what it sounds like, something is causing too many redirects, sending your website into an infinite redirection loop.
Essentially the site is stuck (such as URL 1 points to URL 2 and URL 2 points back to URL 1, or the domain has redirected you too many times) and unlike some other errors, these rarely resolve themselves and will probably need you to take action to fix it.
You might have also come across the error “request exceeded the limit of 10 internal redirects due to probable configuration error“.
Variations of ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS Error in Popular Web Browsers
There are a couple of different variations of this error depending upon the browser you’re running.
1. Google Chrome
In Google Chrome this error will show as ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS (as seen below) or This webpage has a redirect loop problem.
This page isn’t working. domain.com redirected you too many times.
2. Mozilla Firefox
In Mozilla Firefox it will show as The page isn’t redirecting properly (as seen below).
An error occured during a connection to domain.com. This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies.
3. Microsoft Edge
In Microsoft Edge, it will simply show as This page isn’t working right now (as seen below).
Domain.com redirected you too many times.
4. Safari
In Safari, it will show as Safari Can’t Open the Page (as seen below).
Too many redirects occurred trying to open “domain.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.
How to solve the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS problem?
We come across a lot of different errors here at Creative Designs, and ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS (also known as a redirect loop) is one we see on a regular basis.
Typically this occurs after a recent change on your website, a misconfiguration of redirects on your server, or wrong settings with third-party services. But don’t worry, this error is fairly easy to fix.
Check out the recommendations below on how to fix this error and get your site back up and running.
How to Fix The ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS Error
Here are some quick recommendations list and things to check to fix the error (sorted in order by most common reasons we see):
- Delete cookies on that specific site
- Clear WordPress site, server, proxy, and browser cache
- Determine nature of redirect loop
- Check your HTTPS settings
- Check third-party services
- Check your WordPress site settings
- Temporarily disable WordPress plugins
- Check redirects on your server
1. Delete Cookies on That Specific Site
Google Chrome and Mozilla both in fact recommend right below the error to “try clearing your cookies.” Cookies can sometimes contain faulty data in which could cause the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error. This is one recommendation you can try even if you’re encountering the error on a site you don’t own.
Due to the fact that cookies retain your “logged in” status on sites and other settings, we recommend simply deleting the cookie(s) on the site that is having the problem. This way you won’t impact any of your other sessions or websites that you frequently visit.
? Creative Tip – Deleting the cookies for the specific website you’re trying to access could be an easy fix for the error. This only works if the error is produced because of a client-side issue — website owners should skip to the section on .htaccess file to see how they can fix the error.
Follow the steps below to delete a cookie on a specific website in Google Chrome:
1. Open Google Chrome, then click on the More icon (displayed by three dots arranged vertically) and choose Settings.
2. Navigate to Privacy and security, then click on Site settings.
3. Click on Cookies and site data and select the See all cookies and site data option. You’ll see a list of all of your cookies appear shortly after.
4. Search for the domain of the website where you’re getting the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error. Next, click on the Delete button next to the shown cookies.
5. Restart your browser and see if the error still happens when you try to access the website.
2. Clear Server, Proxy, and Browser Cache
Due to the fact that redirect loops are responses that can be cached, it’s always recommended to try clearing the cache on your WordPress site, the server, third-party proxy services, and even your browser if necessary.
#1: Clear Server Cache
If you can’t access WordPress admin, many WordPress hosts have their own control panel tools for clearing the cache on your WordPress site.
#2: Clear Proxy Cache
If you’re using a third-party reverse-proxy service such as Cloudflare or Sucuri, it can also be beneficial to clear the cache on their side.
Cloudflare
To purge Cloudflare cache, login to their dashboard, click into “Caching” and click on “Purge Everything.”
Sucuri
To purge Sucuri cache, login to their dashboard, go to “Performance” and click on “Clear Cache.”
#3: Clear your browsing data
Clearing your cache and other browsing data may help solve the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error faster than expected.
? Creative Tip: If you want to check and see if it might be your browser cache, without clearing your cache, you can always open up your browser in incognito mode. Or test another browser and see if you still see the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error.
Follow the steps below to clear browser cache on Google Chrome:
1. Open Google Chrome, then click on the More icon (displayed by three dots arranged vertically) and hover over More tools. Here, click on Clear browsing data.
2. Make sure the Time range is set to All time.
3. Make sure that all of these options are ticked: Browsing history, Cookies and other site data, and Cached images and files.
4. Click on the Clear data button
5. After the process is over, restart Google Chrome and see if the error is still appearing when you use the browser.
3. Disable your Chrome extensions
Google Chrome extensions are known to be a hit or miss. Some extensions may contain harmful code or features that interfere with the websites you visit. We recommend disabling any unnecessary extensions you have installed to see if it fixes your error.
1. Open Google Chrome, then click on the More icon (displayed by three dots arranged vertically) and hover over More tools. Here, click on Extensions. Alternatively, you can enter chrome://extensions/ into your browser and hit the enter key.
2. Click on the Remove button on any extensions you don’t recognize or don’t need. Check if you’re able to browse without the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error appearing.
4. Try Incognito mode
When using the Incognito Mode built into Google Chrome, you browse without cache, cookies, or browser history being stored. This may help you avoid getting the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error message when visiting various websites.
Here are the steps to take in order to browse in Incognito Mode.
- Open Google Chrome, then click on the More icon (displayed by three dots arranged vertically).
2. Click on the New Incognito Window option from the context menu. A new window will appear letting you know that you’re browsing incognito.
3. Enter the website you want to visit the address bar and see if you can access it without the error message appearing.
5. Reset your browser
If nothing else works, resetting your Google Chrome settings may do the trick. You can attempt this method if you perform the following steps.
- Open Google Chrome, then click on the More icon (displayed by three dots arranged vertically) and choose Settings
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Advanced.
- Navigate to the Reset and clean up section, then click Restore settings to their original defaults
- Click on the Reset settings button
- After the process is over, restart Google Chrome and see if the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error is still appearing when you use the browser.
6. Owners: Check the .htaccess file
Website owners should test if the problem comes from the .htaccess file. You can do this by locating the file, then deleting it and reloading the website. Make sure to create a backup of the file in case you need to restore it in the future.
If the redirect loop is gone after .htaccess is deleted, it was the culprit. Some additional things that may cause a redirect loop include new scripts, add-ons or plugins. Try disabling anything you recently added to the website to see if the error disappears.
Extra Tips on How to Fix Redirection Loop Error
Use these tips to help you fix ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error:
1. Determine Nature of Redirect Loop
If clearing the cache didn’t work, then you’ll want to see if you can determine the nature of the redirect loop. This free online Redirect Checker tool can help provide some further analysis into what might be going on. This could also be done via cURL.
For example, on the site below, it has a 301 redirect loop back to itself, which is causing a large chain of faulty redirects. You can follow all the redirects and determine whether or not it’s looping back to itself, or perhaps is an HTTP to HTTPS loop in which we’ll discuss how to solve that further below.
The Redirect Path Chrome extension can also be very useful and provides insights into all of the redirects happening on your site (specific URL or page).
2. Check Your HTTPS Settings
Another thing to check is your HTTPS settings. A lot of times we ‘ve seen ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS occur when someone has just migrated their WordPress site to HTTPS and either didn’t finish or set up something incorrectly.
3. Check Third-Party Services
ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS is also often commonly caused by reverse-proxy services such as Cloudflare. This usually happens when their Flexible SSL option is enabled and you already have an SSL certificate installed with your WordPress host. Why? Because, when flexible is selected, all requests to your hosting server are sent over HTTP. Your host server most likely already has a redirect in place from HTTP to HTTPS, and therefore a redirect loop occurs.
To fix this you need to change the Cloudflare Crypto settings from Flexible to either Full or Full (strict). Make sure to also check out our steps on how to install an SSL certificate while using Cloudflare.
4. Check Redirects on Your Server
Besides HTTP to HTTPS redirects on your server, it can be good to check and make sure there aren’t any additional redirects setup wrong. For example, one bad 301 redirect back to itself could take down your site. Usually, these are found in your server’s config files.
How to Fix ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS Error for WordPress
If you find that message while trying to load your site, it means that the entire page or the entire content is unavailable for you and your users. This might happen due to a recent change on your WordPress site, a wrong configuration of redirects, or some issue with third-party services.
Although it seems pretty serious, it’s not the end of the world: this error is easy to fix.
But you need to solve it as soon as possible to avoid a bad experience for visitors. After all, if they see that message on the screen, they might give up on you before even knowing what you’re offering, because your website doesn’t seem secure.
In this post, we’re going to describe the reasons for the error too many redirects on WordPress sites. Also, we’re going to address the many steps required to fix it.
Here’s what we’re going to cover:
- What does the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS mean?
- Why does ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error occur?
- How to solve the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS problem?
What does the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS mean?
The error too many redirects is shown when the browser can’t establish a connection between the initial page and the destination page in a redirect.
If you use Google Chrome, the warning looks like this: “This page isn’t working. www.example.com redirected you too many times. Try clearing your cookies. ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” or “This webpage has a redirect loop ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS.”
On Mozilla Firefox, you will get:
“The page isn’t redirecting properly. Firefox has detected that the web server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS.”
On both of them, the message is crystal clear: the page doesn’t load because it has been redirected to a loop, or there has been too many redirect requests.
Why does ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error occur?
Redirects are either an efficient SEO strategy or a tool to allow users to access pages with a different URL.
Let’s assume that you have a big, relevant website, but, for some reason, instead of refreshing the content, you’d rather send your user to a new page, one that’s more consistent or has more functions.
It would be an inconvenience to ask the visitor to click again or type a different URL in the address bar.
When you use redirects, people can automatically access the new page while trying to reach the old one. Even after having typed the wrong address, they get to the right page. That means a significant improvement in user experience.
However, when there’s a misconfiguration, the browser can get confused and redirect the visitor to other URLs or an unknown destination.
When the browser doesn’t understand or know which URL to use, it gives up searching for the right URL to avoid overload. That’s when the user gets the error message on the screen.
In some specific cases, the browser even goes into an infinite redirection loop. That’s how it works: the old URL redirects to the new one, but due to the misconfiguration, the new URL redirects back to the old one.
Finally, the system gives up on trying all this and displays the message: “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS”.
Solving the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS Problem in WordPress
If you are not the site admin, you only need to clear the browser cache/cookies and refresh the page. If that doesn’t work, you will have to contact the manager and wait until he fixes it.
However, if you are the manager, you will have to try a few things. The error is usually a result of WordPress’s misconfiguration, as we previously mentioned. Sometimes, it can be solved by something as easy as clearing cookies or cache.
That’s why we’re going to present to you some strategies so you can get rid of that message. This way, you won’t let your visitors down.
1. Clear the cookies and the cache
When that message pops out, some browsers suggest that the problem might be the cookies.
That’s why we also recommend you to try that even if you’re the site owner.
But how exactly do you clear cache and cookies? It’s simple. It only takes a few minutes, although it differs depending on the browser you’re using. Here are some specific instructions:
Google Chrome
- At the top-right, you will see three small dots. Click on it. Then, select settings.
- Scroll down and click on “Advanced”.
- Then you have to click on “Clear browsing history”.
- Next, select “cache and cookies”.
- Select the time range, which is how many cookies you want to delete based on the period (last 24 hours, seven days, four weeks).
- Then, click on “Clear data”.
Mozilla Firefox
- Click on the three small dots at the right-top.
- Next, click “Clear data”.
- Select the option “Cookies and Cache”, and click “Clear”.
Try refreshing your site one more time. If that strategy doesn’t work, you will have to follow the next steps.
2. Clear the WordPress site cache
Depending upon the type of redirect loop, you might still be able to gain access to your WordPress admin dashboard. In this case, you can easily clear the cache within the settings of your caching plugin. Here are a couple of quick links on how to clear WordPress cache with popular plugins:
- Clear Cache with Cache Enabler
- Clear Cache with W3 Total Cache
- Clear Cache with Super Cache
If you use a caching plugin (Super Cache WP or other), the next attempt should be clearing the WP cache.
As each plugin works differently, it’s necessary to check the specs of the one you have installed on your blog.
You can Google the name of the plugin for some info or ask support for help. Then, you will receive instructions on how to clear the cache in your plugin settings specifically inside your WordPress admin dashboard.
Then, again, you need to refresh the website to see if everything’s OK. In case there’s still an error, you’re not there yet. Keep reading.
3. Check the URL settings
It’s essential to check the URL settings because a misconfiguration can cause redirect loops. Click on the “General” tab within “Settings”.
There are two main fields:
- WordPress URL (which specifies where all WP files are).
- Site’s URL (the home page address that’s available for users).
In most cases, those two addresses should match. Check it carefully, so the differences don’t cause further problems.
None of them must contain:
- Whitespaces at the end.
- www at the beginning (as in https://www.example.com). Instead, it should be https://example.com.
If one URL contains “www” and the other doesn’t, change them so they can be the same: either both contain it or none of them does. You can also try to insert PHP before HTML.
In case you can’t access the control panel to alter the URL, it’s still possible to do it by editing the wp-config file:
- Go to the file manager (FTP client).
- Open the folder with your WordPress files.
- Find the wp-config.php.
- Right-click on “Edit URL”.
- Add those lines to the code (don’t forget to change the URL).
- Redefine the address and remember that both should match, home and WordPress (‘WP_HOME’ and ‘WP_SITEURL’).
- Save the file.
- Click on “Yes” on command prompt to upload the modified file.
- Refresh the site and check if the problem has been solved.
If you will, you can also change the address via the database. All it takes is a login onto the web server through MySQL. The phpMyAdmin is part of many hosting services panels and can be used for that.
- Find the wp_options table (or the other prefix defined during installation).
- Double-click the fields you need to edit.
- Modify the address in option_value (in the two first lines: home page address and WordPress’ address, the same thing we mentioned before).
4. Change the security protocol
If you use a security protocol (SSL certificate such as the free Let's Encrypt SSL), switch it to a default protocol. Refresh the page and check if the redirect loop is gone.
If the message is still there, it means that your SSL certificate needs to be set up properly before you use it again (the address stays as https).
Don’t forget to consult expert support to return to a setting that guarantees access security for users. That is also essential to ensure higher reliability on your site.
5. Redefine the .htaccess
It’s important to verify the .htaccess file every time there’s an error on WordPress. The file is part of the Apache server settings and is used to control page redirect. Therefore, any problem in the file can cause issues in the redirect routine.
To check if that’s the case, you will need to redefine the .htaccess file:
- Locate the site files using the FTP client.
- Find the folder with the WP files.
- Locate the .htaccess.
- Download it as a backup.
- Right-click on it and open the file for editing (never change the backup, only the original version).
- Clear the content of the .htaccess and reset settings to default (you can easily find the default setting on the internet).
- Save and upload the default file to the web server.
- After you’ve done that, refresh the site.
If your site is OK after that, you will have to reconsider the .htaccess file; if not, you will have to restore the backup, because that file is not the source of the problem. Then, it’s necessary to keep digging.
6. Check the plugins
WordPress plugins can always be the root of any problem. If you have any redirect plugin installed, start by disabling them.
If that solves the issue, you’re good. If it doesn’t, you need to disable one by one to check which of those plugins caused the loop.
That may take a long time, but don’t panic! There’s a quick and convenient way to do it automatically: first, disable all plugins once, before refreshing the page (don’t forget to backup the original .htaccess file as we’ve previously discussed).
If the loop is still there, enable all plugins again and continue to the next step. After having refreshed the site, if you see the error is gone, you will have no other choice but to test one by one.
If ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS keeps you from accessing the control panel, disabling all plugins manually may be necessary. You can do that in the FTP client or the file manager.
- Find the plugins folder, which is usually within the wp-content folder.
- Rename all folders.
- Or remove them all at once (never forget the backup).
ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS is an easy issue to solve, so you only have to ask for help if none of those steps work. If so, you can enable PHP error_reporting to go even further on the problem analysis.
We hope that this guide helps lead you to a quick solution. However, if those steps are not enough to fix the issue, contact your host manager.
People who work there will know how to solve the redirect error. They might even be the ones who caused it in the first place.
Don’t leave it for later. Try to have that solved as soon as possible to ensure that your user will have the best experience on your site.
Talking about user experience, did you know you might lose leads if your page is slow?
✔️ Check out our awesome guide on how to optimize and make your server fast – Lightning FAST! You can also see how to design your site and get free insights on how to improve it!
Final Thoughts on Solving ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS Error
We hope that this article has helped you resolve the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error in your web browsers. Enjoy browsing the internet uninterrupted!
If you’re looking for more guides on how to fix browser related errors, or want to read more tech-related articles, consider subscribing to our newsletter. We regularly publish tutorials, news articles, and guides to help you in your day-to-day tech life.
? Creative Summary: Redirect loops can sometimes be tricky to track down. But hopefully, some of the troubleshooting steps above help you to resolve your ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error. If we missed anything, feel free to let us know below in the comments.
