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IIS URL Rewrite – Remove Legacy v6 Redirect Rule

After migrating from Nodinite v6 to v7, browsing to the new HTTP endpoints, for example the Web Client at http://localhost:<port>, may unexpectedly redirect to the old v6 HTTPS address such as https://localhost:4001/Nodinite/Test. On Windows Server, each v7 Core Service is its own IIS web site with the port you set in the Portal (Step 4: Servers → Core platform services). This guide explains why this happens and how to remove the legacy rule.

Background – What Is IIS URL Rewrite?

IIS URL Rewrite is a module for Internet Information Services that evaluates incoming request URLs against a set of rules and can rewrite or redirect requests to a different URL. Rules can be defined at three levels:

  • Server level – applies to all sites on the server
  • Site level – applies to a specific IIS site
  • Application level – defined in the application's web.config

During a Nodinite v6 installation, a server-level URL Rewrite rule (commonly named Nodinite forward) was added to redirect plain HTTP root requests to the v6 HTTPS address. After migrating to v7 the rule is no longer needed, but it remains in IIS and silently intercepts requests intended for the new v7 services.

Symptom

After migrating to Nodinite v7, opening the HTTP port of a v7 Core Service web site in a browser (e.g. http://localhost:<port>) immediately redirects to an HTTPS URL such as:

https://localhost:4001/Nodinite/Test

The page fails to load because the old v6 virtual directory no longer exists. This is caused by a legacy URL Rewrite redirect rule on the IIS server.

Identify the Rule

  1. Open IIS Manager (inetmgr from a Run prompt)
  2. In the Connections pane, click the server node (top-level, not a site)
  3. In the Features View, scroll to the IIS section and double-click URL Rewrite

IIS Manager showing URL Rewrite tile in the server-level Features View
Example of IIS Manager at server level with the URL Rewrite tile visible in the IIS section.

  1. Locate the rule named Nodinite forward (or a similar Nodinite-related name)
  2. Confirm it has an Action Type of Redirect pointing to https://{HTTP_HOST}:... or https://localhost:4001/...

Remove the Rule

  1. Select the Nodinite forward rule in the list
  2. In the Actions pane on the right, click Remove
  3. Confirm the deletion when prompted

URL Rewrite rule list showing the Nodinite forward redirect rule selected, with the Remove action highlighted
Select the legacy redirect rule and click Remove in the Actions pane. The rule will be deleted immediately.

  1. Close URL Rewrite — no IIS restart is required; the change takes effect immediately
  2. Retry browsing to http://localhost:<port> to confirm the redirect no longer occurs

Verification

After removing the rule, navigating to the Web Client at http://localhost:<port> should load the Nodinite v7 Web Client directly without any redirect. If the browser still redirects, clear the browser cache (Ctrl + Shift + Delete) to remove any cached 301/302 responses.

Prevention

Important

Remove any legacy IIS URL Rewrite rules at the server level as part of the v6 → v7 migration, at the latest when you remove the old v6 IIS applications (Step 9: Remove legacy v6 IIS applications), and before configuring TLS on the new installation (Step 10: Configure TLS). Leaving the rule in place will cause misleading redirects that are difficult to diagnose because the rule operates transparently at the server level, before any v7 application code runs.

See the Updating from v6 to v7 migration guide for the complete list of prerequisites.

Next Steps