{"id":207,"date":"2026-08-12T04:37:53","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T04:37:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.claudiasteward.com\/?p=207"},"modified":"2026-08-12T04:37:53","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T04:37:53","slug":"recent-updates-and-fixing-a-wordpress-403-error","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.claudiasteward.com\/?p=207","title":{"rendered":"Recent Updates and Fixing a WordPress 403 Error"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It has been a busy few days on the workbench. After getting everything settled in the new Proxmox environment and cleaning up my local network configuration, I finally got around to fine-tuning my custom WordPress block theme, Fossil. Things were going incredibly smoothly until I decided to switch the blog&#8217;s access from a local IP address to a proper domain name. Almost instantly, I hit a wall and was locked out with a frustrating 403 Forbidden error.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Troubleshooting the Domain Switch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When you transition a site from an IP address to a domain name, especially when you have multiple containers and networks talking to each other, things can easily break. After some digging, I figured out the problem, so I am dropping the fix here in case anyone else runs into the same issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Step 1: Check for SSL \/ Protocol Mismatches (HTTP vs HTTPS)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the site was set to <code>http:\/\/<\/code> under the IP address, but your domain is configured to enforce or redirect to <code>https:\/\/<\/code> (or vice versa), Apache or Nginx may block admin subdirectories. This happens when SSL\/TLS certificates or proxy headers aren&#8217;t properly passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To test this, you need to <strong>open your wp-config.php file<\/strong> and temporarily <strong>disable administrative SSL enforcement<\/strong>. Add this line:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">PHP<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', false);\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you are behind a <strong>Reverse Proxy or Load Balancer<\/strong> (e.g., Cloudflare, Nginx proxying to Apache), WordPress might not recognize HTTPS traffic. You will need to <strong>add this specific header check<\/strong> just above the <code>\/* That's all, stop editing! *\/<\/code> line in your <code>wp-config.php<\/code>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">PHP<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>if (isset($_SERVER&#91;'HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO']) &amp;&amp; $_SERVER&#91;'HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO'] === 'https') {\n    $_SERVER&#91;'HTTPS'] = 'on';\n}\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Things to Notice: Additional 403 Troubleshooting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the protocol mismatch wasn&#8217;t the root of your issue, here are two other <strong>important steps<\/strong> to check when dealing with 403 errors:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Verify File Permissions:<\/strong> A 403 error literally means access is denied by the server. You need to <strong>ensure your directories are set to 755<\/strong> and your <strong>files are set to 644<\/strong>. If they are too restrictive, the server will block WordPress from loading.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Regenerate your .htaccess File:<\/strong> URL changes often corrupt rewrite rules. You can <strong>rename your existing .htaccess file<\/strong> via the command line to disable it. Once disabled, log into your WordPress dashboard and <strong>resave your permalinks<\/strong> to force the system to generate a fresh, working file.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Getting all these moving parts to talk to each other correctly is half the battle when self-hosting, but finally seeing the site load cleanly on the new domain makes it worth the effort. I hope this saves someone else a bit of troubleshooting time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It has been a busy few days on the workbench. After getting everything settled in the new Proxmox environment and cleaning up my local network configuration, I finally got around to fine-tuning my custom WordPress block theme, Fossil. Things were going incredibly smoothly until I decided to switch the blog&#8217;s access from a local IP [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything-else"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.claudiasteward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.claudiasteward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.claudiasteward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.claudiasteward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.claudiasteward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.claudiasteward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208,"href":"https:\/\/www.claudiasteward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions\/208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.claudiasteward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.claudiasteward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.claudiasteward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}