This is a follow up on the last post when I had implement a redirect rule in a Sitecore  6.2.0 (rev. 100507). You can find there, the issues I faced when trying to implement the rule and what I did at that time as possible solution.

Now, I want to present the solution that was found by one of my coworkers to whom I have asked permission before to publish this post. First, you need know that the error I was having when using the Redirect URL module in IIS is a known issue for that version.

Here is the reported issue at Sitecore. As you can see, there are two workarounds detailed in the issue:

1. Change the application pool mode to “Classic” – This was one of my previous attempts to fix this, but in my case it didn’t work for all the pages in the site.
2. Ask Sitecore support for a hotfix created for this case and version. You need to use the reference number 326522. However, when we tried this option we received a Sitecore communication saying the Sitecore version we are using has entered the Sustaining Support Phase starting from 1st January 2016. This means that they are not able to further assist us via the Sitecore Support.

Solution:

Since we didn’t get the workaround detailed there. We implemented another solution which consists on creating an empty site in IIS containing only the redirect rule to send request to https:

<rule name="sitemap http to https" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="(.*)" />
<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAny">
<add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="off" />
</conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="http://{HTTP_HOST}{REQUEST_URI}" appendQueryString="false" />
</rule>

But now, instead of using the variables “{HTTP_HOST}, {REQUEST_URI}”, we set the redirect url as “HTTPS://MYSITESITECORE6”. Finally, the last step was adding the bindings as “HTTPS” in this new site and let the non-HTTPS site with its previous bindings.

This way, every time a request comes to the server it hits the new empty site and redirects to the actual site but now with https as protocol.