403 Forbidden Error

Hi @jwestinghouse,

WordPress Popular Posts doesn’t restrict access to anything on your website so this issue is being caused by something else (configuration issues? .htaccess rules that need review/tweaking? etc.)

I recommend using the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin for some basic debugging, it might help you figure out what’s going on. Check out the official documentation for more details.

So you think I need to add something like this to my HTACCESS file?

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^google.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.google.com/$1 [L,R=301]

I excluded the directory for wordpress popular posts in w3 Total Cache, could that be the issue?

I’d try ruling out plugin conflicts first. That’s why I suggested using the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin on my previous comment. Messing around with .htaccess rules can cause issues if you’re not careful / don’t know what you’re doing (redirection issues, SEO issues, etc.)

If all this sounds too complicated you may want to consider reaching out to your regular developer (or hire one if needed) so they can look into this for you.

Yeah, I’m showing no issues with the site health scan. Thank you. I’m guessin’ I’ll have to look deeper

@jwestinghouse – I’m just browsing here and don’t know the specifics, but whatever the case is here, you should definitely decide to use one or the other (www. or not) and stick with it.

You should also redirect to the https while you’re there, so it’s done in 1 shot and your server isn’t doing any more work than it needs to.

The code you posted will redirect like this:
https://example.com > https://www.example.com

You would need to setup another redirect here to get the visitor to go:
https://www.example.com > https://www.example.com

Below is the basic code that’ll get your visitors to the https quicker and more efficiently. And it’s not just website performance, like I said, you’ll have less problems when using the same URL structure everywhere. (And that means forcing other people/services to use the URL you want.)

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

Marking as resolved due to inactivity.