403, Just one page, Why?

Did you created a (empty) directory called “books”?

It’s an actual page, and it has subpages, which work fine.

Well, actually, it doesn’t have subpages anymore, because I moved them to a different page that I created, /titles/

However, I need to figure this out, because our promo material all uses /books/ not /titles/

Frustrating!

Ok, so I deleted the page called books. Everything worked fine, including the page called titles. Then I change the “slug” for /titles to /books, and it gave me that 403 again. It remembers.

I sure hope somebody knows something about this.

I guess I am still hoping some wordpress uber-geek will read this and take pity on me…
Here’s an update. I am doing ok with the replacement page being called titles instead of books. The weird thing is that an old url (the one I was worried about because it’s published out in the world) https://cornucopiapress.com/books/worthfighting just decided to redirect itself to … /titles/worthfighting. So if I type the old url into the address bar, the replacement loads.

If I can count on that, it makes my life easier. But I’m really curious as to why.

Wondering if I shouldn’t get on the server and poke around in the database after all. ??

I have exactly the same problem…

For some reason, the page with the slug “clients” results in a 403 error, it was working yesterday, isn’t today. Nothing has changed on the server.

If i change the slug of the page to another name…. eg “clients2” then it appears fine, but i would rather not do this, as the URLS have been widely distributed.

Please could an administrator / moderator contribute to this post to suggest a solution.

Many thanks.

UPDATE!

Having finally spoken to the hosting company (i don’t have direct access to live site), there was a folder called clients sitting in the web root of the server, once this was removed the page with the slug clients worked fine again.

One problem fixed, another presented!

How the heck did this folder (and another one called “cat”) get added to the server, is there a wordpress bug that does this? Is it a server thing? A mod-rewrite thing?

Any pointers much appreciated!

bounce! – Please help!

Thanks

I am embarrassed to tell you what the problem was.

The client had given FTP details to another party, without me knowing. This other party was unwitting adding folders to the site without realising the knock on effects of their actions.

** sigh **