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Fix Forge SSL Renewal When WWW Redirect Breaks ACME

On Laravel Forge, enabling a www redirect on the apex domain (for example, redirecting example.comwww.example.com) can cause Let’s Encrypt renewals to fail.

This happens because Let’s Encrypt validates domain ownership by requesting an ACME challenge file under:

/.well-known/acme-challenge/...

If that request gets redirected, the validator may not receive the expected response from the original domain, and the renewal fails.

  1. Disable the www redirect for the affected site/domain in Forge.

  2. Renew (or re-issue) the Let’s Encrypt certificate in Forge.

  3. Re-enable the www redirect after the certificate has been successfully renewed.

  • Visit the site and confirm HTTPS is valid on both example.com and www.example.com.
  • Check the Forge site’s certificate status and renewal date.