Philhosting.Net Knowledgebase Center

When you receive an error " 403 Forbidden error " on your site, you have to check the error log in your cPanel for more information. To do this log in CPanel and click on the "Error log" icon. You will see a list of the last error messages displayed by your website. In this list you will find detailed information about each error including: the date and time of the error, some information about the client receiving the error, description of the error and information about which folder or file is generating the error. Here are some examples of the most common ones and how to fix them:

[Thu Apr 19 01:46:56 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.45] client denied by server configuration: /home/user/public_html/file.php

This error message may be received when the access of certain IPs to certain files/folders/websites is forbidden by a rule added in the .htaccess file. If you do not want to deny access to this IP you should make sure the .htaccess files of your website does not include such rules. In order to check if such rules are added to your website please open the .htaccess file of the folder that generates the error and search for a line like:

deny from 127.0.0.45 - denying a particular IP or just deny from all - denying all IPS

If you find such a line you should delete it and save the changed in the file. After that the client with this IP shouldl be able to access the files in the folder and will not receive the 403 forbidden error.

[Thu Apr 19 02:13:24 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.76] Directory index forbidden by rule: /home/user/public_html/

Such error message will be displayed when a user tries to open a directory which has no index file and at the same time the Indexes option for this directory is turned off. In order to avoid it from happen, please make sure that the .htaccess files within the director, which displays this error does not contain a line like the one below:

Options -Indexes