Chronic "403 Forbidden" problem

[neil-yaj396]

I use this forum with regard to my MG.

https://www.the-t-bar.com/

I don't like it as much as the old LMC/Betaboyz Myzen forums, it's less intuitive and I don't find the search function as good plus it doesn't have the logical home page divided by subject etc. However, I guess it is modern as it was fully updated a couple of months ago, although this took quite a bit of work by the admins post update as it stopped working properly on Edge even though it was fine on Chrome.

It's all a classic example of how modern software isn't always an improvement. I've tried several new apps to replace Microsoft Money that I use for my home budget, every single one has been useless.......

[nthomas1]

Well here we go again.  I've spent a very frustrating couple of days trying to help a chap in Rome who is struggling with the rebuilding of his Fulvia doors.   I've pointed him to various pages in my 51-page Forum thread but he keeps getting the 403 screen.   In the end I've resorted to providing him with a series of screen shots, which have taken a lot of time to produce as I too keep getting the 403 screen.

I once again ask the question what is the formal process to have the 403 problem recognised by the committee and addressed with some urgency?  Is there a specific committee member I should be contacting directly?   Again, I fear that the value of the Forum, possibly the greatest asset that the club possesses, is being seriously compromised by this technical issue.   Anyone reading through this thread will see that I am not alone in my concern, with some members now saying they are no longer recording their experiences on the Forum because of their frustration. 

[Parisien]

Yes, whole heartedly agree.

There is an alternative option to going through page by page and that is to go to your browser options,  select download and it will be saved as an offline version as a single page or you can press share then press print on drop-down options, change drop-down to PDF, single page saved also.

Can't save a full thread I believe.

Not sure if this is allowable though to share etc pages of LMC forum to third parties or non members?

Opinions?

P

[nthomas1]

It may be possible to find work arounds, but we'll lose those people who are only occasional users of the Forum.  That group includes many or maybe most of the people I have encouraged to look at my rebuild thread for information.

[sparehead3]

I have found a potential fix and made and change to a configuration file in our setup
The forum is still working for me and I don't get the 403 errors so I cannot test whether there is any difference here - but at least it doesn't appeat to have made it worse.
Please tell me if this makes any difference to those that are suffering the problem.

[simonandjuliet]

Thanks for trying , but no change for me - it has taken 4 go's to reply to this

Happy New Year to one and all

[Parisien]

Thanks for trying , but no change for me - it has taken 4 go's to reply to this

Happy New Year to one and all

Must be that EDF fibre connection you have Simon!

As before, I only get it when I'm doing a search, usually after page 5/6/7 depending.

Looks like a gremlin in the machine scenario

Hoping it improves for most Steve

P

[lancialulu]

Sorry to say no different on EDF UK supply and BT internet. All platforms I have permit just 4 clicks to dreaded 403.

The common denominator is high users. So if you only use it infrequently although you may do many clicks in one session you will not see it. The first person to see this was Frank Tierney many years ago. He was a frequent user of the forum. Now it seems all high users are being hit.

[lancialulu]

Beta boyz forum uses same software but one version later 1.1.21 and I am not aware of 403 issues with that one.

[nthomas1]

I appreciate the attempts to fix the problem Steve, but no change for me.  On both Apple MacBook and iPhone I get the 403 screen after 4 to 5 clicks when trying to page through a thread.

[neil-yaj396]

Beta boyz forum uses same software but one version later 1.1.21 and I am not aware of 403 issues with that one.

Yes, Tim, I've never had it happen on the 'same' Betaboyz Forum.

[Ics19]

Yes, Tim, I've never had it happen on the 'same' Betaboyz Forum.

Ahh, it can be done, but you need to click the right links - though that could just be me, see attached.

Granted, it's not so frequent on the BB site, but it's (mostly) producible by clicking successive title links of a post, most easily done on threads that have a dozen of more posts, see attached link for the one I'm referring to.  It generally only takes about 5 or 6 different post link clicks for the 403 to occur, but they need to done relatively quickly.  I never experienced the issue initially as probably a slow reader!

However, is it really a forum version issue? I've had some involvement in an old SMF site and having had a quick search through an old install, I can't see any page that looks like the 403 that we probably all see.  Is it possibly something more webserver related that's meant to be blocking DoS attacks? Without wading through lots of posts, has anyone actually asked the zen folk if they know what it is?

[Ics19]

After a spot of lunch time browsing, I see the BetaBoyz have successfully updated their old SMF forum to version 2.0.19 and all looks intact which is to be commended

However, it's still possible to trigger the 403 phenomena on the new forum, as I described in my post above.  I used the same thread as before to test this.  In light of this, it would appear the issue is potentially outside of the forum software version and so banking on an LMC update to fix the problem could well be the wrong horse.

As I mentioned before, has anyone contacted Zen on this matter?