Remove .htaccess redirect on site lockout

The .htaccess is the fastest redirect, so why not enable it by default?

When you enable the setting “htaccess redirect” in settings/ssl/settings, Really Simple SSL detects the most suitable redirect, then opens a testpage to verify if this option won’t result in redirect loops. Even so, the detected redirect can cause a loop: there are a lot of server configurations, and some respond unexpectedly to the proposed rules. If this happens, you get locked out of the back-end, because of the redirect loop. For this reason, this setting is optional. I recommend using it, but you need to know how to remove it just in case.

This only happens on about 1% of the sites and is easily fixed, but make sure you have FTP access.

If you encounter an issue when this setting is enabled, just remove the rewrite rule from your .htaccess file:

1. Open your ftp client (for example filezilla)
2. In the root of your website, look for the .htaccess file. If you cannot find it, make sure filezilla shows hidden files
3. Open it in a texteditor, and look for # BEGIN rlrssslReallySimpleSSL
4. Remove all lines between # BEGIN and # END, and save
5. Prevent Really Simple SSL from editing the htaccess any further:
   • Look for wp-config.php in the root of your site.
   • Open the wp-config, and add at the top, but after  “<?php":
define( 'RLRSSSL_DO_NOT_EDIT_HTACCESS', TRUE );