Forwarding a GoDaddy domain, but HTTPS requests are not forwarding

Question

I'm working through my first attempt at domain forwarding, and it should be simple, but I'm running into difficulty with HTTPS requests. Part of this is I'm working with a friend who has an old web developer, and I'm trying to figure out how to communicate this.

My domain oldsite.example is with GoDaddy. I also have domain newsite.example with GoDaddy. The initial domain forwarding was simple. I set up oldsite.example to forward to a specific URL at newsite.example (https://newsite.example). Result: if I type either oldsite.example or http://oldsite.example into the address bar, I get to newsite.example. Great. BUT, if I type in https://oldsite.example, I get a page that loads forever, then eventually says the server is not responding.

I understand this issue is that, wherever the oldsite is hosted (this is where I'm unclear from the previous developer), there needs to be some action taken to forward HTTPS requests to HTTP -- right? Because the oldsite is not hosted with GoDaddy, and I don't see any active SSL certificates through GoDaddy. I tried to communicate this to the old developer (via my friend), and he seems to think I just forwarded the domain incorrectly in GoDaddy. But I talked to GoDaddy support for an entire HOUR, and they said the site is not hosted with them, so they can't help with forwarding HTTPS requests.

Answer 1

Godaddy's forwarding services have problems and shouldn't be used:

• GoDaddy's 301 redirect/forwarding has some weird random middleman URL, kills link juice?
• They don't support HTTPS

One way to solve the problem would be to buy hosting from Godaddy and redirect from the hosting. That would support HTTPS and give you more control. It would also be expensive.

The better alternative is to use CloudFlare to redirect your old domain. You can do so with their free service tier, so it doesn't cost anything. I've found their redirects to be reliable. They automatically handle the certificates and configuration for HTTPS for you. It takes a bit of work to set up: you have to change our NS records at GoDaddy to point to the name servers that CloudFlare gives you and then do some configuration in your CloudFlare account. Complete instructions are here: How to avoid SSL warnings about certificate not for the current site when redirecting alternate domains?

Answer 2

I just did mine with redirect.pizza (not affiliated with them). I have my domain hosted a GoDaddy. Now both HTTP and https://oldsite.example as well as www.oldsite.example forward to https://newsite.example. I wasn't able to do this with godaddy's domain forwarding.