Otherwise, thank you for your code! It was very helpful!

One other thing that came in handy was overriding CI’s base_url() method in MY_url_helper; other libraries like Template call base_url() when you do things like add_js() or add_css(), which causes warnings to pop up in IE if you’re on a secure page. This was the fix:

function base_url() {
   $framework =& get_instance();
 
   if (isset($_SERVER['HTTPS'])) {
      return $framework->config->slash_item('secure_base_url');
   } else {
      return $framework->config->slash_item('base_url');
   }
}

I should point out there a couple of things that need to be fixed. In your code above, the last line of the function secure_anchor() in your url helper is missing a couple of single quotes. It should read:

return '<a href="'.$secure_site_url.'" rel="nofollow">'.$title.'</a>';

Also, it would be better not to edit the core CI files. One day someone else might upgrade CI and your ssl suddenly doesn’t work!. Instead put the url_helper code in a file called MY_url_helper.php and store it in system/application/helpers/

Likewise, instead of adding code to the core Config.php library, put it in system/application/libraries/MY_Config.php – and follow the instructions for extending native libraries found at this url:

http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/creating_libraries.html

in MY_Config.php you would wrap the function with this code:

class MY_Config extends CI_Config {
 
}

But I don’t agree with “So don’t need the secure anchor”. Your solution will make all anchors secure which is good for 100% secure site.

Think of a situation, you have a secure page and in that page you need some links with “http”. Again in a “http” page you need some links with “https”. In these situations my solution works fine.

$config['host_url'] = ((isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && $_SERVER['HTTPS'] == "on") ? "https" : "http");
$config['host_url'] .= "://".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
$config['base_url'] = $config['host_url'] . str_replace(basename($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']),"",$_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']);

AND for SSL redirect I use a utility helper

if (! function_exists('ssl_redirect'))
{
    function ssl_redirect()
    {
        if ($_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] != 443)
        {
            redirect(str_replace("http://", "https://" , current_url()), "refresh");
        }
    }
}

That redirects the current url to ssl url. It’s called in the controller you want to have only ssl request like payment pages. For generating anchor if you have the base_url dynamically generated like stated above, anchors are generated with https if the pages are in https. So don’t need the secure anchor. Hope this helps!