Need help redirecting to secure(SSL) folder

[thepreacher]

We have started to collect and store some sensitive data on our website and as such we have dicieded to switch the site to an SSL protected folder. Now since most people will not type https://www.foo.com, what i did was to move all the files to the secure folder (httpsdocs) and leave leave a file index.php in the non secure folder (httpdocs) which redirects to https://www.foo.com using the php header function.

What happens is that, the redirection times out after several attempts by the browser.

How do i host an SSL enabled site such that people can type www.foo.com and get the padlock showing in the status bar?

BTW the hosting is on a VPS and the OS is linux

[GrandSchtroumpf]

The method you are describing seems correct.
The timeout is strange.  Maybe there are some errors in your code.
You can also use .htaccess to do the redirection.

[VGR]

have you checked that directly accessing https://www.foo.bar does work OK ?