Question

"Forbidden - You don't have permission to access / on this server" Error

Posted on January 7, 2017
Ubuntu 16.04 Apache
Asked by joginayak

I followed the virtual hosts tutorial and set up apache for my domain name aditidentalcare.com. The website was loading perfectly but now I am suddenly getting this error.

Forbidden - You don’t have permission to access / on this server.

I don’t understand why!

Here is the aditidentalcare.com.conf

<VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin jogi@smashingpixels.in ServerName aditidentalcare.com ServerAlias www.aditidentalcare.com DocumentRoot /var/www/html/sites/aditidentalcare.com/public_html ErrorLog /error.log CustomLog /access.log combined </VirtualHost>

The permission for public_html is set to 750 and the owner:group is jogi:www-data

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Jonathan Tittle • January 7, 2017

Accepted Answer

@joginayak

You need to use chmod 755 instead of 750 on directories. Using 750 equates to users having read, write, and execute, groups having read and execute, and finally, world (i.e your visitors) having absolutely zero access, thus they will be forbidden from accessing and/or viewing the contents.

MadDoxx • May 21, 2018

i deploy Centos; try command in terminal chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/* it works; or if you using WINscp or FTP try CHMOD directory to 0775 and check Recrusively, files will automatic 0644, but i know it takes long time and wasted your time.

Tom Jansen • December 29, 2019

@srjcooldude @kasidkhan

if you were using a wordpress site, it could have quite possibly been caused by a corrupt .htaccess file. the simple fix is to resave permalinks twice in order to regenerate .htaccess.

you might be seeing the below error messages:

“The REST API encountered an unexpected result” in site health
“Publishing failed and invalid JSON response” upon updating or publishing posts or pages
“Forbidden You don’t have permission to access this resource. Apache/2.4.41 (Ubuntu) Server at Port 80” when viewing posts or pages

br, tom