How to deactivate/remove https on localhost project from online

Question

I'm working on a messy customer project. To debug it, I would like to work on it on localhost. I'm using Wampserver.

This is what I did :

1 - I made a virtualhost

httpd-vhosts.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName devfoo.pro
    DocumentRoot "c:/path/to/project/src/www"
    <Directory  "c:/path/to/project/src/www/">
        Options +Indexes +Includes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Require local
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

2 - I renamed the file .htaccess to _.htaccess

At that point when I run the page, there is still a redirection from http://devfoo.pro to https://devfoo.pro.

Notice : If I rename the plugin really-simple-ssl to _really-simple-ssl, the page redirect to the online website.

So... how can I import a WordPress project on localhost and deactivate the https protocol properly ? (Keeping the https on localhost is so messy! I never manage to simulate https on a local server with or without documentation, tutorials etc... )

Answer 1

I also had this experience with chrome and firefox, they switch http to https and did not find a way to overcome it, so i used internet explorer in that windows machine.
I don't think you can have ssl on localhost or an ip address, i guess you know it as you used devfoo.pro. SSL certificate could be generated only for fully qualified domain names.

So, you will need to buy a certificate to have things working, out of the box. Easy and "secure".
Or you can self sign one for your self, following a tutorial :-). Might be difficult and you will need to accept it in your browser or os.
Or better (at least for me), use this website. It will self sign a certificate for a provided domain.

Answer 2

to remove https on an install, you can do a find and replace on the local database, I found wpcli is the easiest way:

wp search-replace 'https://example.com' 'http://example.com'
wp search-replace 'https://www.example.com' 'http://www.example.com'

you can also do a find+replace with a normal .sql. be mindful for serialized strings in the _options table, they often break, but if you know it's broken and why it's not hard to fix.

beyond that:

• look for plugins like "force https" and make sure they're removed

• look in wp-config.php and make sure there's no hard coded HTTPS rule in there (sometimes force_ssl, sometimes, site_url, etc.)

• the .htaccess renaming was a good move, but all that needs to be taken out of there is any http->https rule.