There may be several reasons why you get a 403 error when trying to access an application running on Apache.
- The user that the client is running under does not have the required permission on the folders/files of the application
- No default document is declared for when a user tries to request a directory eg. http://local.wordpress/
- Directory Browsing is not enabled
Specifying a Default Document
A solution for the default document issue is to add the following to your Apache configuration – either httpd.conf or your virtual hosts file, if separate:
DirectoryIndex index.php
By default, an Apache installation is pre-configured to serve index.html when a user attempts to request a directory, but alot of application s such as wordpress, for example, are PHP applications, and so we need Apache to serve index.php be default.
Allow Directory Browsing
To allow directory browsing add the following to your Apache configuration – either httpd.conf or your virtual hosts file, if separate:
<Directory “/webapps/myApplication”>
Options All Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>