404 / 403 when reaching admin area

akratzel

Hi there,

so I am running a shared hosting plan @ fastcomet.com which actually never let me down and is pretty damn good!

So I wanted to start a new platform using Flarum and their service team ran the installation for me, but unfortunately I cannot reach the admin section whatsoever.

They have tested several different .htaccess files, as well as various other methods such as changing the permissions of the application's files or accessing the admin.php file directly, but neither of them seemed to work out.

Initially, accessing /admin produced a 404 error message, however, after adding a new .htaccess file for my application the same now produces a 403 Forbidden error.

I also researched the 403 Forbidden error, however, I was unable to resolve the same. There were several forum posts which suggested editing the Nginx configuration file, however, due to my account being located in a shared web hosting environment, i am unable to test such changes, as making changes to the Nginx configuration will also affect everyone else on the same shared hosting server.

Anybody knows how to figure this out?

Thanks in advance, help is very much appreciated!

clarkwinkelmann

Hi, welcome to Flarum !

I understand you're running nginx ? In this case .htaccess files won't have any effect (it's for Apache). You do need to add the suggested nginx config from the install page to your nginx site configuration.

There is usually a per-host configuration in nginx where you can just drop that config (only the part with php-fpm will depend on your specific setup).

Also in the case rewrites are actually working, make sure you're connected to Flarum before accessing /admin. It won't redirect to a login page but show a 403 if you're logged out.

If the 403 has "nginx" written at the bottom of it it means it's not generated by Flarum and that the rewrites aren't working.

akratzel

clarkwinkelmann

Thanks for getting back! I will discuss your reply with fastcomet and will see how it goes! ?

akratzel

@clarkwinkelmann after talking with the technical support, we found that Nginx is configured as a reverse proxy to the Apache service, however, the 403 Forbidden error message is not being displayed by Nginx. Even if this were the case with Nginx, fastcomet cannot provide assistance with this, as Nginx is a service running on the server and making changes to its configuration will also affect the environment of every other user on this server.

They mention that for those custom configurations, I would need a dedicated managed server where the resources are not being shared among other users.

Can we do something here? Since it's hard for me to believe that I am the only guy who wants to use Flarum with a shared hosting space! ?

clarkwinkelmann

akratzel if Apache is handing the request at the end the default .htaccess should do the trick then !

Do rewrites work for the non-admin pages ? Can you create a discussion and access it ? Or are rewrites completely broken ? Is Apache's mod_rewrite module active ? (it should be on shared hosting but we never know...)

If it still doesn't work maybe you can share your forum url so I or somebody else can have a look ? (at least from the outside)

akratzel

clarkwinkelmann the url is https://www.stinger-forum.de

Registering/login is not working which is why I cannot create a topic to begin with.

AFAIK the mod_rewrite is active but I will double check with the support.

Is anything like this familiar to you? ?

clarkwinkelmann

akratzel yeah it looks like the whole rewrite config isn't working. I can't see how it would be a Flarum issue. The .htaccess shipped with Flarum should just work with any Apache as long as htaccess files and the rewrite module(s) are enabled.

To check whether the htaccess is actually read by the webserver I usually just type random garbage in it and see if the server returns a 500 error. If not this means htaccess files are disabled.

Also something you should be careful: you're allowing both www and naked domain access, which breaks fonts and API when using the one not defined in config.php. Add a redirect to make sure visitors always use the one defined in config.php. This likely isn't related to the rewrite issue though.

gurjyot

Even I use Fastcomet and love their services. So I also wanna know what's the issue, as I am planning to soon use Flarum on Fastcomet.

akratzel

clarkwinkelmann thanks i will Point this Go fastcomet. Maybe they just screwed up the installation or something! ?

akratzel

clarkwinkelmann Hey clark! thanks again for all your answerd. I have a fresh installed version of flarum on my domain now and it's up and running smoothly!

I don't know exactly what the issue was, but with a fresh install and pointing everything to https (also editing the config.php accordingly), it works just the way it should!

Thanks!

gurjyot

akratzel Good to know that your installation worked perfectly. That means Fastcomet is good for using Flarum. ?

akratzel

gurjyot it perfectly is! Just ask them to install the software for you and they will do it for free ?