Google Chromium, the open-source base for Google Chrome, has two bug reports that are causing some problems around the web, especially since the problematic version of Chrome was pushed as the latest stable release. Chrome versions 44 and 45 are reported in Chromium issues 505268 and 501842 to break WordPress websites that do not use HTTPS. The problem is that Chrome 44 requests resources to come as HTTPS but if the server can’t support it, the site errors out.
So far, this has been reported for a variety of self-hosted WordPress sites upon trying to login and even some sites where the additional resources like CSS and Javascript files are requested using an HTTPS URI. The server configuration then returns a 404 Not Found error and the page is displayed as a broken mess to the site visitor. Other sites are also reporting redirect loops that end in the error ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS.
The problem is reported on a variety of operating systems including Windows 7, OS X 10.10, and Ubuntu 14.04 using Chrome Dev and Canary channels of Chrome 44 and 45.
Within the bug threads, Chromium developers explain that a header was added specifying ‘HTTPS: 1’. This requests resources as secure. The bug was merged in the stable branch of Chromium but did not make the deadline for Tuesday’s release.
Even if the solution was something you could set in your local browser, the problem is distributed to all of the visitors of your site. You can try to fix the issue with a workaround in an .htaccess file on your server but it should be removed after Chrome is fixed:
RequestHeader unset HTTPS
You can continue to watch the Chromium Issues threads for more details and testing your sites with new versions of Chrome as they are released.