Some HTTP redirect checking sites compared
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/02
Every now and then I want to check how a URL redirect, for instance when checking out why a domain failed loading in browsers a while ago because of certificate problems:
- [Wayback/Archive] SSL Server Test: vems-sassenheim.nl (Powered by Qualys SSL Labs)
- [Wayback/Archive] SSL Server Test: www.vems-sassenheim.nl (Powered by Qualys SSL Labs)
The thing was that back then, the site officially did not have a security certificate, but somehow the provider had installed a self-signed one. Most web-browsers then auto-redirect from http to https. Luckily the archival sites can archive without redirecting:
When querying [Wayback/Archive] redirect check – Google Search, you get quite some results. These are the ones I use most in descending order of preference and why they are at that position:
- [Wayback/Archive] whatsmydns Redirect Checker both warns on certificate problems and allows bookmarking the results, for instance [Wayback/Archive] Redirect Checker: http://vems-sassenheim.nl, [Wayback/Archive] Redirect Checker: http://www.vems-sassenheim.nl, [Wayback/Archive] Redirect Checker: https://vems-sassenheim.nl/ and [Wayback/Archive] Redirect Checker: https://www.vems-sassenheim.nl/.
Note that even if a URL is not redirected, it still checks the certificate. How cool is that! - [Wayback/Archive] Tiny URL Expander | Redirect Checker – WhereGoes does allow to bookmark results (warning these are stored server-side!) for instance [Wayback/Archive] Trace Results | WhereGoes: http://vems-sassenheim.nl, [Wayback/Archive] Trace Results | WhereGoes: http://www.vems-sassenheim.nl, [Wayback/Archive] Trace Results | WhereGoes: https://vems-sassenheim.nl, and [Wayback/Archive] Trace Results | WhereGoes: https://www.vems-sassenheim.nl, but does not indicate any certificate errors.
- [Wayback/Archive] Redirect Checker | Check your Statuscode 301 vs 302 it always ends up first in the search results, but is not so good: it requires a
POSTHTTP request and you cannot bookmark the result.
Furthermore, it promises to support html meta refresh redirect but does so only partially: back in the XS4ALL days, jp.home.xs4all.nl would redirect to http://wiert.me (see below) but does not get followed (only warned). - [Wayback/Archive] Bulk URL HTTP Status Code, Header & Redirect Checker | httpstatus.io has a hart to read result (you need to hover with your mouse over the status codes to see where they redirect too) and you cannot bookmark the result.
Being able to bookmark the result of a redirect check is important to me as it allows archiving in the Wayback Machine or Archive.is for later reference.
This came in useful when checking if some old XS4ALL URLs still worked after their infrastructure migrated to KPN.
Client side redirect checking?
I searched for [Wayback/Archive] client side javascript based redirect checker – Google Search which returned one useful result that regrettably does not work out of the box in the browser: [Wayback/Archive] Basic 301 redirect checker using NodeJS.
All other results were about how redirects work:
- [Wayback/Archive] Javascript redirect URL
- [Wayback/Archive] HTML redirect – HTML meta refresh redirect
- [Wayback/Archive] 301 redirect – URL http redirection
The XS4ALL days
Historic redirects that worked:
The actual content were these (note the Wayback Machine shows you the individual redirects, and Archive.is only the final target page):
- [Wayback/Archive] http://xs4all.nl/~jp
- [Wayback/Archive] http://www.xs4all.nl/~jp
- [Wayback/Archive] https://jp.home.xs4all.nl/
The final redirect ([Wayback/Archive] Redirect Checker: https://jp.home.xs4all.nl) itself an html meta refresh redirect to https://wiert.me that none of the redirect checkers follow (but the archivers do).
Which leads me to the html meta refresh example through wget (--output-document - will not save a file but show it on stdout, --progress=dot won’t clobber the output with a progress bar):
C:\temp>wget --output-document - --progress=dot http://www.xs4all.nl/~jp --2022-10-13 15:50:03-- http://www.xs4all.nl/~jp Resolving www.xs4all.nl (www.xs4all.nl)... 2600:9000:2204:8800:a:5e19:cc40:93a1, 2600:9000:2204:fe00:a:5e19:cc40:93a1, 2600:9000:2204:a600:a:5e19:cc40:93a1, ... Connecting to www.xs4all.nl (www.xs4all.nl)|2600:9000:2204:8800:a:5e19:cc40:93a1|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently Location: https://www.xs4all.nl/~jp [following] --2022-10-13 15:50:04-- https://www.xs4all.nl/~jp Connecting to www.xs4all.nl (www.xs4all.nl)|2600:9000:2204:8800:a:5e19:cc40:93a1|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Moved Temporarily Location: https://jp.home.xs4all.nl/ [following] --2022-10-13 15:50:04-- https://jp.home.xs4all.nl/ Resolving jp.home.xs4all.nl (jp.home.xs4all.nl)... 2001:888:0:28::95, 194.109.18.12 Connecting to jp.home.xs4all.nl (jp.home.xs4all.nl)|2001:888:0:28::95|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 394 [text/html] Saving to: 'STDOUT' <html> <head> <title>Homepage van Jeroen W. Pluimers <meta http-equiv="Buttetin-Text" content="Please go to http://wiert.me"> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1; URL=http://wiert.me"> </head> <body> <p>Pleast wait a moment, you are being connected to the wiert.me web-site. <p>If that doesn't happen, please click on the link to go there. </body> </html> 0K 100% 958K=0s 2022-10-13 15:50:04 (958 KB/s) - written to stdout [394/394]
--jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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