The HTTP 403 Forbidden response status code indicates that the server understands your request but refuses to authorize it. In other words, you are not authorized to access the specified URL.
Different 403 error messages depending on web server
“You are not authorized to view this page”
“It appears you don’t have permission to access this page.”
“Error 403 – Forbidden”
“Forbidden – You don’t have permission to access /index.php on this server”
“403 – Forbidden: Access is denied”
“403 – Forbidden Error – You are not allowed to access this address”
“403 Forbidden – nginx”
“HTTP Error 403 – Forbidden – You do not have permission to access the document or program you requested”
“403 Forbidden – Access to this resource on the server is denied”
“403. That’s an error. Your client does not have permission to get URL from this server”
The following sections show you the causes, and how to fix the error:
How to fix the 403 Forbidden error code
We help you identify the different causes and how to fix it on each case.
403 Forbidden caused by browser
Your browser’s cache or cookies could cause the 403 error.
TIP: You can test in an incognito browser tab to check if browser cookies or cached info is the cause to your 403 Forbidden error.
If your incognito session works, then your browser cache or cookies are the problem.
In order to make a website load faster the next time you visit it, the browser cache stores data. However, it could happen that a link was updated, and the current web page link is now different from the cached version.
It can also happen that the error comes from session cookies. It may be the case of a website that you usually access, and due to expiration of the session or due to a change in some cookie reference, the server does not consider you authorized and returns this error message.
To fix the error, remove all session data, cookies, and cache data from the domain of the visited page.
403 Forbidden caused by your web server
If you are setting up a new site, this could be your case. When the web server returns a 403 error, it is indicating that there are insufficient rights for a ressource.
How to fix the web server configuration
Verify your domain is pointing to your server. Check the log file, and find the error. Another alternative is to display the IP address in your browser’s developer tools network panel:
An IP address different from our server indicates that we request the page or ressource from an incorrect server. Check the domain in the url of the ressource and the configuration of the DNS zones.
Verify the file permissions. The target HTML ressource your server is trying to show must be readable by the same user running the web server.
To view and modify your site’s file permissions, you’ll need to connect via SSH/FTP/SFTP. Here’s how to connect via SFTP with FileZilla.
Check the .htaccess if your web is are running an Apache web server.
Check the nginx.conf if your web is running with an Nginx web server.
We are techies passionate about WordPress. With wetopi, a Managed WordPress Hosting, we want to minimize the friction that every professional faces when working and hosting WordPress projects.
