You are right. It needs to be done using wordpress. I found the process to follow here. (webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/104704/…) Thank You!

Sorry, if I am not making it clear. The error was likely triggered by cloudflare disruption. However, as you wrote, "Google will likely favour the HTTPS version over HTTP anyway", it looks like I do not need to worry a lot about setting the canonical version. If there is a code to set it using htaccess, please just let me know. Thank you!

I also received a mail from cloudflare right now that a server disruption today caused a spike in 502 errors. In my webmaster account too, it is showing as a 5xx error. Plus the message was not for my preferred version which is non www but for the www version. I use non www urls.

Hi Docroot, Can you give me the code for setting the preferred canonical version in htacces?

Ok, I wanted to know how to set the canonical to https. One way is to set canonical to https version through Yoast SEO plugin for each url individually. I have heard it can also be done through htaccess. I already received a mail from webmasters regarding "duplicate without user-selected canonical".

Yes, I checked. https version is 200 and http version is 301 -> 200. 1 redirect.

Thanks for the help! So the plugin method is also sound. I do not need to worry about setting it in .htccess?

I have not set a .htaccess redirect but am using really simple ssl plugin which sets a wordpress redirect. htaccess redirect had caused a redirect loop. Will this matter in terms of seo?