The forbidden error occurs in two main places, when attempting to access the main page of the board, and when attempting to access a CGI script.

• When accessing your board

  If you are trying to access your board at http://your.server.com/discus and you get a forbidden error:

  • Attempt to access your board at http://your.server.com/discus/index.html instead. Some servers don't recognize "index.html" as a directory index file, and require that it be typed explicitly. You could also try http://your.server.com/cgi-bin/discus/discus.cgi with Discus 4.0 or higher.

  • Make sure that you haven't installed your HTML files under the server's cgi-bin directory. If the server treats the HTML files as CGI scripts, this error may occur. If you did install the HTML files under the cgi-bin directory, you should run the setup again.

  • In a strange situation, it could be that your computer is forbidden from accessing the files in that directory due to IP address restriction. This would be a rare problem, but potentially possible.

• When accessing CGI scripts

  If you do not have CGI permission on your server, or you put CGI scripts in directories without CGI privileges, you may get a "Forbidden" error.

  • Make sure that the permissions on the CGI file you are attempting to access are set to 0755. The telnet/SSH setup automatically sets permissions to 755 rwxr-xr-x. If you did the FTP setup, be sure that you set permissions properly on the scripts, as instructed in the readme.html file.

  • Make sure that the script is in a directory that allows the execution of CGI scripts. Consult your ISP's documentation or your server's documentation for instructions on setting up CGI directories. Typically this needs to be under a cgi-bin directory (but not always).

DiscusWare is NOT able to help you resolve this error in any way. This is because this error always occurs as a result of improper permissions being set or a misconfiguration of your server. This error does not occur due to failing Discus scripts. As such, there is nothing that DiscusWare can do to help you with this error. If you cannot determine the cause of this error, contact your web host's technical support.