While working on your website, you may be redirected to the InfinityFree 403 error page. This article explains why this can happen, and what you can do to solve it.
The directory does not contain an index file
If you try to request a URL without a file name in the URL (e.g. http://example.com/ or http://example.com/blog/), the server will look for a so-called index file.
An index file is a file with the name index.php, index.html, index.htm or index2.html in the folder you’re trying to access. Regarding index files, please note the following:
- The server will look only for files in the specific directory being requested, not in subdirectories.
- Our servers are cAsE sEnSiTiVe, so calling the file
Index.phporindex.HTMLwill not work.
If no index file is found, you will be redirected to a 403 Forbidden page.
There are a few different ways to fix this:
- Upload an index file to the right location (recommended).
- You can create a file with the name
.htaccessin the directory and add the lineOptions +Indexes. This will cause the server to show a list of files and directories instead. - You can create a file with the name
.htaccessin the directory and add the lineDirectoryIndex yourFile.html index.php index.html index.htm, whereyourFile.htmlis the name of the file that should be loaded.
The URL contains a blocked file or folder name
The “chat” keyword
Live chat scripts are not allowed on InfinityFree hosting. Chat scripts work by constantly refreshing the page in the background. These background refreshes generates excessive server load, which is why we cannot host them. You are free to use live chat on your website though, but you will have to use an externally hosted chat system to handle the messages.
To enforce this, the chat keyword is blocked on our servers. If you try to access any URL with chat in it, you’ll get a 403 Forbidden page. For example, http://example.com/chat.php, http://example.com/livechat/index.php will all result in a 403 error.
To fix this, you can rename the file or folder to anything else (like talk, message, conversation or whatever else you want).
Please do note that live chat scripts are banned completely, and being able to work around this block doesn’t mean it’s OK to host a live chat script with us.
The includes folder
For security reasons, all files in a folder includes are blocked. This includes URLs like http://example.com/includes/function.php or http://example.com/includes/pages/product.php.
The idea behind this is that includes means that the folder contains scripts meant to be loaded into other scripts with PHP include (or require). Scripts like that are generally not meant to be accessed directly.
The fix for this is simple: do not use the folder name includes for anything that’s supposed to be accessed by browser. Instead, put such pages in a folder pages, functions, actions or a folder with any other name.
Your site blocks access from your IP address
With .htaccess rules, it’s possible to selectively block or allow visitors based on their IP address. But using these rules, it’s also possible to lock yourself out of your site.
To do so, open a file manager or FTP connection to your site, go to the website folder and open the file .htaccess.
If there are lines starting with deny from or allow from in the file, it means IP access control is configured on your site.
If you do not want to do any IP level restriction, you can simply remove all these lines from your file.
If there is a line allow from all, you should look for any lines with deny from .... that contain your IP address.
If there is a line deny from all, then you should add a line with allow from .... that contains your IP address.