atticus233

I got this advice from a tech-savvy friend, and this was the cause of my problem – it was completely resolved afterwards. The problem was something that had happened in cpanel – ie with the hosting platform control. Hope it helps. …….

You have this code in the public_html/YOURSITE.com/.htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https://ANOTHERSITE.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https://ANOTHERSITE.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ – [F,NC]

This is added by a feature in cPanel called Hotlink Protection – designed to stop other people linking to / embedding your images in their website. Your own domain is not on that list, so it is blocking the images on your own site too! You also have “Allow direct requests” unticked, which is why you can’t access the images directly.

If you add your domain to the list it should fix it. I would also tick “Allow direct requests” because some firewalls disable the referrer header and make all requests appear to be direct requests. Alternatively you could just turn off Hotlink Protection.

Resolved now – needed to “allow direct access” in the Hotlink Protection element in cPanel.

Hi – thanks for getting back again here, I appreciate it.

I’ve had a look at what you’ve said … the permissions do all seem to be OK … they’re 0755 for folders and 0644 for files. I checked another WP site I’ve got on the same server and it matched those permissions … and that site works just fine.

It must be something else. You’re right, there are no plug-ins activated at all.

Anybody else reading this with any pointers or experience of this problem please?

Many Thanks

Glad your problem is solved mattihch.

For anyone else who might help, my original problem is still unresolved – any solutions are VERY welcome!

Thanks