Forwarding Ports To A Secure Apache Web Server

Question

When forwarding ports to a Secure Apache Web Server should you block access to the non-secure port 80? Or can you redirect (via dns or some other method), or have Apache redirect (via it's configuration), the traffic back to the secure port 443?

Answer 1

It should be acceptable to allow incoming port 80, and then in your internal server, redirect port 80 connections to SSL port:

See: http to https apache redirection

Answer 2

Assuming you to be using a linux environment. You can edit the

/etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

Add the following under Document Root:

Redirect permanent / https://mysite.example.com/

In the URL you can also a specific port say 443 -> https://mysite.example.com:443/