403 error, deleted .htaccess, can’t access site

  • Resolved jesignor

    (@jesignor)


    7 years ago

    I am not able to access my site via wp-login.php. I moved the .htaccess file off the server temporarily and since then I get a 403 error. Not able to re-upload .htaccess as root directory won’t accept a file beginning with a period, so for now I renamed it htaccess without the period. What prompted me to move the .htaccess file is I was getting a redirect to home page when attempting to log in. That might have been a plugin issue, but I have temporarily disabled all plugins by renaming the plugins folder to plugins-backup. So, now when attempting to log in I don’t even get a redirect; I get a blank page with 403 error. Usually I’m able to find a solution to this kind of thing but I’m stuck! Hoping someone knows what to do or could look at the site. Hopefully this won’t end in having to start over from a clean slate from backup.

    Thanks

    [ Signature redacted ]

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Are you able to upload the file as htaccess (without the dot) and then re-name it to add the dot?

    If not, cant you upload it as htaccess (without the dot) and ask your hosting provider to rename it?

    Thread Starter jesignor

    (@jesignor)

    My brother manages his site and mine via fatcow. I had him look and he says the .htaccess is in there. It isn’t viewable to me via FTP but I guess is from the admnin end. Could have fatcow look at this maybe. Though…

    I re-downloaded a new copy of WordPress and replaced all the standard parts except content sections that I wouldn’t want to lose, and prior to that I made a backup of everything. But, still not able to get in. Main menu links are accessible from the front page, but submenus come up with the “Forbidden” error. /wp-login.php comes up “Forbidden”. I checked permissions and don’t see anything wrong.

    Not being any kind of expert in SQL and all that I installed wampserver and phpmyadmin and got as far as creating a server, dieectory, user, but have no clue how to upload my backups from folder on my computer, which I FTP’ed down as files. IT appears that to access a backup it would have to be an SQL file and I have no idea how to create that. And obviously can’t get into WP to download a backup from there.

    Unfortunately one of the disadvantages of WordPress seems to be that content is not easily accessible, whereas they would be if building a site without WordPress. Lesson to save actual HTML/CSS as text and not just rely on the backups which are archaically hidden — unless one is a pro developer.

    Not sure what to do and no one seems to know.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Unfortunately one of the disadvantages of WordPress seems to be that content is not easily accessible

    I promise you that this is not normal. Something very weird is going on with your site. WordPress wouldn’t be up to 28.9% market share if it was always this difficult: https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_management/all/y

    So, let’s find out what’s interfering to cause the problem.

    Try manually resetting your plugins (no Dashboard access required). If that resolves the issue, reactivate each one individually until you find the cause.

    If that does not resolve the issue, access your server via SFTP or FTP, or a file manager in your hosting account’s control panel (consult your hosting provider’s documentation for specifics on these), navigate to /wp-content/themes/ and rename the directory of your currently active theme. This will force the default theme to activate and hopefully rule-out a theme-specific issue (theme functions can interfere like plugins).

    Thread Starter jesignor

    (@jesignor)

    The problem was Comodo DNS on the server side. The site got cached in a folder that had become inaccessible. Problem solved but having to rebuild a lot of the site.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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