403 Forbidden Error —?And I Can’t Get Around IT!!

  • Resolved dkudler

    (@dkudler)


    3 years ago

    I was adjusting some of the settings on AIOWPS —?it’s been my security plugin on this site for a couple of years and has been working fine.

    I turned on the option to block certain user agents —?just a few bots that drive me nuts — saved and…

    Forbidden
    You don’t have permission to access this resource.

    Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

    On every page. Front end. Back end. From any computer on any browser.

    I’ve had plugins lock me out before, so I went through my usual routine:

    • I FTPed in and moved the plugin folder.
    • I used phpMySQL to try to find the table where the settings were stored —?couldn’t find it (found tables for failed logins, etc., but not the settings)
    • I tried to find the htaccess file… but it wasn’t in the root
    • I tried restarting

    None of this did any good at all.

    My site is completely offline, and none of the things I’d usually do to bring it back up have worked. Any suggestions before I go to my host and beg them to restore from a backup?

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

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Thread Starter dkudler

    (@dkudler)

    I tried moving <i>all</i> the plugins into quarantine —?no good. I also deleted the contents of the cache folder. Likewise.

    Thread Starter dkudler

    (@dkudler)

    So I found the AIOWPS_USER_AGENT_BLACKLIST block in the htaccess file and commented it out.

    All is now working. Very weird.

    Why would that shut me out of the site?

    Plugin Support vupdraft

    (@vupdraft)

    That’s an interesting one. What agents did you add?

    Thread Starter dkudler

    (@dkudler)

    Here’s the rules:

    #RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ [NC,OR]
    #RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^AhrefsBot [NC,OR]
    #RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^AspiegelBot [NC,OR]
    #RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^BLEXBot [NC,OR]
    #RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Barkrowler [NC,OR]
    #RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^MJ12bot [NC,OR]
    #RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^MauiBot [NC,OR]
    #RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^PetalBot [NC,OR]
    #RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SemrushBot [NC,OR]
    #RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SeznamBot [NC,OR]
    #RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^petalbot [NC]`

    Obviously, I commented them out.

    That first one… doesn’t look good, now that I think of it!

    Plugin Support vupdraft

    (@vupdraft)

    I also think the first one is the cause.

    The user agent string is a text that the browsers themselves send to the webserver to identify themselves, so that websites can send different content based on the browser or based on browser compatibility.

    By leaving it blank, it looks like you have blocked all users

    Thread Starter dkudler

    (@dkudler)

    Wow. Okay. Not sure how that got in there — whether I added an extra return by accident or what.

    I uncommented all of the lines except the empty first one, and all seems to be working. Fingers crossed!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • The topic ‘403 Forbidden Error —?And I Can’t Get Around IT!!’ is closed to new replies.