403 Forbidden Error

I had and install of 3.0 working however, I had the install in a sub directory of my url. \wordpress which I had a sub domain pointed to. It was working fine. I went to move the index.php file outside the subdomain into the main domain so it would be live. I followed the steps that the general settings sections recomend. I did not follow this parenthetical statement in line one (On linux, use mkdir wordpress from your www directory. You’ll probably want to use “chown apache:apache” on the wordpress directory you created.) I didn’t understand it (fools rush in). I am using a lamp server. Anyway. I just want to get the original install in the sub domain / sub directory working agian so that I can make another attempt. It gives me the 403 error and 404 error each time I try and view a page, be it sub page or main page. I have set my permalinks on the default. I am not sure if my .htaccess files are to blame or not.

Any advice?