Renewal Link Results In Too Many Redirects Error

Question

I'm trying to setup membership renewals for an organisation I've just migrated over to CiviCRM, all of the membership details seem to have been imported correctly (dates and details show correctly). All memberships expired on 31.12.16.

I am trying to setup the renewal emails and have emailed a dummy run to myself via my membership record. Having reviewed the guidance at https://docs.civicrm.org/user/en/master/membership/renewals/ I have set the URL in the emails to

my.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/contribute/transact&reset=1&id=N&{contact.checksum}&cid={contact.contact_id}

When the link comes through on the emails it is populated correctly with the checksum and ID but when I click on it I get a too many redirects error.

I've found something strange in that if the link is clicked as is - eg.

my.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/contribute/transact&reset=1&id=N&{contact.checksum}&cid={contact.contact_id}

(obviously populated with info) I get an error. However, if I set the URL to

my.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/contribute/transact**?**reset=1&id=N&{contact.checksum}&cid={contact.contact_id}

, I initially get a page not found error, if I then change the ? symbol back to an & symbol the renewal page all completely filled in as it should be appears.

Does anyone know what's going on, I can't ask my members to renew using an incorrect link that requires manual modification.

I have replicated this error both in Chrome and Safari. I am using Joomla version 3.6.5. I am using CiviCRM version 4.7.14.

Please help!

Answer 1

"Too many redirects" is almost always caused by URL rewrites. Your web server software (e.g. Apache, nginx) handles URL rewrites, so it's most likely that your problem lies in the configuration of that software, not CiviCRM. To my knowledge, CiviCRM doesn't generate a redirect on any links other than click-through links.

To resolve this, I would take the following two steps:

• Press "F12" to open your Developer Tools (in Chrome or Firefox; Safari's are lacking). Go to the "Network" tab.
• Trigger the "too many redirects" error. You should see a bunch of network requests. Note the URL, and look for any patterns. A common pattern is:

http://my.org/civicrm/

http://my.org/civicrm/civicrm

http://my.org/civicrm/civicrm/civicrm

etc.

• Find the "rewrites" section of your web server configuration. Look for the pattern that matches the URLs you found on your Network tab. Tweak that rewrite rule and restart your web server software.