# HTTPS works perfectly, but HTTP URL displays NGINX welcome page and doesn't redirect
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [January 25, 2021, 5:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195 "2021-01-25T17:46:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ajmuir](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ajmuir)
#### Post date: [January 25, 2021, 5:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195/1 "2021-01-25T17:46:33Z")
I’ve recently installed Discourse to a Ubuntu Focal Fossa VPS and it works great, however I’m struggling to overcome some URL peculiarities.
The following is the behaviour I am seeing (in Safari). I have A NAME records for @, WWW and \* created in with my registrar.
```
example.com [displays Welcome to nginx! page] FAIL
www.example.com [redirects to https://example.com] PASS
http://example.com [displays Welcome to nginx! page] FAIL
http://www.example.com [redirects to https://example.com and works fine] PASS
https://example.com [works as expected, doesn't redirect] PASS
https://www.example.com [errors with 'This Connection is Not Private' browser message] FAIL
```
I would like my installation to be at the root/apex so I entered `example.com` at setup.
Any advice graciously received!
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [January 25, 2021, 5:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195/2 "2021-01-25T17:47:53Z")
Are you running an external nginx in the Discourse server? Why?
Discourse already ships with a pre-configured nginx that will handle that provided you let it listen to the 80 and 443 ports.
---
### Author:  [@ajmuir](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ajmuir)
#### Post date: [January 25, 2021, 5:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195/3 "2021-01-25T17:52:13Z")
Hi @Falco, thank you for your reply. Not to my knowledge no, the image from the VPS provider is just called “Focal Fossa Clean OS” which I assume means it contains no third party tools.
This is just straight out of the box using the “30 minute” install route published.
```
sudo su
wget -qO- https://get.docker.com/ | sh
git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse_docker.git /var/discourse
cd /var/discourse
./discourse-setup
```
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [January 25, 2021, 5:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195/4 "2021-01-25T17:53:22Z")
Ohh that is a really weird behavior then!
Can you share your app.yml here (remove the sensitive data like passwords). The file lives at `/var/discourse/containers/app.yml`.
Also the `docker ps -a` output.
---
### Author:  [@ajmuir](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ajmuir)
#### Post date: [January 25, 2021, 6:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195/5 "2021-01-25T18:14:15Z")
Sure thing, thank you. Would my domain having a weird TLD cause any issues? (it’s a **.community** ).
```
## this is the all-in-one, standalone Discourse Docker container template
##
## After making changes to this file, you MUST rebuild
## /var/discourse/launcher rebuild app
##
## BE *VERY* CAREFUL WHEN EDITING!
## YAML FILES ARE SUPER SUPER SENSITIVE TO MISTAKES IN WHITESPACE OR ALIGNMENT!
## visit http://www.yamllint.com/ to validate this file as needed
templates:
- "templates/postgres.template.yml"
- "templates/redis.template.yml"
- "templates/web.template.yml"
- "templates/web.ratelimited.template.yml"
## Uncomment these two lines if you wish to add Lets Encrypt (https)
- "templates/web.ssl.template.yml"
- "templates/web.letsencrypt.ssl.template.yml"
## which TCP/IP ports should this container expose?
## If you want Discourse to share a port with another webserver like Apache or nginx,
## see https://meta.discourse.org/t/17247 for details
expose:
- "80:80" # http
- "443:443" # https
params:
db_default_text_search_config: "pg_catalog.english"
## Set db_shared_buffers to a max of 25% of the total memory.
## will be set automatically by bootstrap based on detected RAM, or you can override
db_shared_buffers: "768MB"
## can improve sorting performance, but adds memory usage per-connection
#db_work_mem: "40MB"
## Which Git revision should this container use? (default: tests-passed)
#version: tests-passed
env:
LANG: en_US.UTF-8
# DISCOURSE_DEFAULT_LOCALE: en
## How many concurrent web requests are supported? Depends on memory and CPU cores.
## will be set automatically by bootstrap based on detected CPUs, or you can override
UNICORN_WORKERS: 8
## TODO: The domain name this Discourse instance will respond to
## Required. Discourse will not work with a bare IP number.
DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME: example.com
## Uncomment if you want the container to be started with the same
## hostname (-h option) as specified above (default "$hostname-$config")
#DOCKER_USE_HOSTNAME: true
## TODO: List of comma delimited emails that will be made admin and developer
## on initial signup example 'user1@example.com,user2@example.com'
DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS: ‘email@gmail.com'
## TODO: The SMTP mail server used to validate new accounts and send notifications
# SMTP ADDRESS, username, and password are required
# WARNING the char '#' in SMTP password can cause problems!
DISCOURSE_SMTP_ADDRESS: smtp.postmarkapp.com
DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT: 587
DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER_NAME: username
DISCOURSE_SMTP_PASSWORD: “password”
#DISCOURSE_SMTP_ENABLE_START_TLS: true # (optional, default true)
#DISCOURSE_SMTP_DOMAIN: discourse.example.com # (required by some providers)
## If you added the Lets Encrypt template, uncomment below to get a free SSL certificate
LETSENCRYPT_ACCOUNT_EMAIL: email@gmail.com
## The http or https CDN address for this Discourse instance (configured to pull)
## see https://meta.discourse.org/t/14857 for details
#DISCOURSE_CDN_URL: https://discourse-cdn.example.com
## The maxmind geolocation IP address key for IP address lookup
## see https://meta.discourse.org/t/-/137387/23 for details
#DISCOURSE_MAXMIND_LICENSE_KEY: 1234567890123456
## The Docker container is stateless; all data is stored in /shared
volumes:
- volume:
host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone
guest: /shared
- volume:
host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone/log/var-log
guest: /var/log
## Plugins go here
## see https://meta.discourse.org/t/19157 for details
hooks:
after_code:
- exec:
cd: $home/plugins
cmd:
- git clone https://github.com/discourse/docker_manager.git
## Any custom commands to run after building
run:
- exec: echo "Beginning of custom commands"
## If you want to set the 'From' email address for your first registration, uncomment and change:
## After getting the first signup email, re-comment the line. It only needs to run once.
#- exec: rails r "SiteSetting.notification_email='info@unconfigured.discourse.org'"
- exec: echo "End of custom commands"
```
and
```
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
465fbf1c3fb8 local_discourse/app "/sbin/boot" 47 minutes ago Up 46 minutes 0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:443->443/tcp app
```
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [January 25, 2021, 8:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195/6 "2021-01-25T20:06:28Z")
Maybe this distro your provider give you comes with pre-installed nginx ?
What does `curl -I localhost` prints?
---
### Author:  [@ajmuir](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ajmuir)
#### Post date: [January 25, 2021, 8:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195/7 "2021-01-25T20:20:00Z")
> [@Falco](#):
>
> curl -I localhost
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
**Server** : nginx/1.18.0
**Date** : Mon, 25 Jan 2021 20:18:00 GMT
**Content-Type** : text/html
**Content-Length** : 169
**Connection** : keep-alive
**Location** : [https://example.com](https://example.com)
Does this mean it was already installed? (sorry I’m a n00b at this)
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [January 25, 2021, 8:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195/8 "2021-01-25T20:29:14Z")
That is the exact expect response when it’s working. So, is `http://example.com` still showing nginx welcome page?
---
### Author:  [@ajmuir](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ajmuir)
#### Post date: [January 25, 2021, 8:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195/9 "2021-01-25T20:31:34Z")
`https://example.com` is working just fine, but `http://example.com` (HTTP) goes off to the **Welcome to nginx!** page 😭
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [January 25, 2021, 8:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195/10 "2021-01-25T20:32:10Z")
Can you share the actual domain?
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [January 25, 2021, 8:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195/12 "2021-01-25T20:35:31Z")
> [@ajmuir](#):
>
> [example.com](http://example.com)
Sooo, that doesn’t give me the nginx welcome page at all.
Can you try it on another device like your phone?
```plaintext
curl -I example.com -L
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Server: nginx/1.18.0
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 20:35:21 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 169
Connection: keep-alive
Location: https://example.com/
HTTP/2 200
server: nginx
date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 20:35:22 GMT
content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
vary: Accept-Encoding
x-frame-options: SAMEORIGIN
x-xss-protection: 1; mode=block
x-content-type-options: nosniff
x-download-options: noopen
x-permitted-cross-domain-policies: none
referrer-policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin
x-discourse-route: finish_installation/index
cache-control: no-cache, no-store
content-security-policy: base-uri 'none'; object-src 'none'; script-src https://example.com/logs/ https://example.com/sidekiq/ https://example.com/mini-profiler-resources/ https://example.com/assets/ https://example.com/brotli_asset/ https://example.com/extra-locales/ https://example.com/highlight-js/ https://example.com/javascripts/ https://example.com/plugins/ https://example.com/theme-javascripts/ https://example.com/svg-sprite/; worker-src 'self' https://example.com/assets/ https://example.com/brotli_asset/ https://example.com/javascripts/ https://example.com/plugins/
x-request-id: 8755d4fa-387f-4509-8709-b6075f274d09
x-runtime: 0.026020
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000
```
---
### Author:  [@ajmuir](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ajmuir)
#### Post date: [January 25, 2021, 8:41pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195/13 "2021-01-25T20:41:18Z")
> [@ajmuir](#):
>
> [example.com](http://example.com)
Ok well I’m clearly a moron. Tried on my phone over 4G (to check local DNS), all those URLs worked fine. Reconnected to WiFi, all work fine. So I then cleared the cache of Safari on the desktop and boom — everything works there too.
It must have been from when I was initially testing the host and the cache hasn’t flushed since. Thank you so much for your help to troubleshoot and sorry for taking up your time.
---
### Author:  [@featherless](https://meta.discourse.org/u/featherless)
#### Post date: [September 18, 2024, 3:40am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/https-works-perfectly-but-http-url-displays-nginx-welcome-page-and-doesnt-redirect/177195/14 "2024-09-18T03:40:36Z")
fwiw I just ran into this same issue today with Ubuntu 22.04. Clearing Safari cache and refreshing also fixed the issue.