Redirecting SSL without raising an alert

A client has an SSL certificate only for the www.site.com version of the domain, not site.com.

Redirecting for regular HTTP was not a problem via mod_rewrite.

However, this method seemed to fail for us for HTTPS.

We want to redirect https://site.com requests to https://www.site.com.

Can this be done without raising an invalid certificate warning in the browser, or getting a wildcard certificate?

Solution 1:

No, it doesn't work that way.

The SSL transaction happens before any HTTP is sent, so the SSL warning will appear before any redirect can happen.

Actually, I don't believe a wildcard would work, either, since site.com and *.site.com are not the same. You may want to consider Subject Alternative Names on the certificate.