403 Forbidden when changing index.html to index.php

Question

I hope someone can help me here. I just want to change the index.html to index.php, but when I do so I get the 403 forbidden error. I followed a bunch of tutorials on permission and installing php etc. to no avail. I am a complete newbie, so most of the time I don’t really know what I am doing but I am trying to follow the tutorials.

If someone could give me complete newbie intructions on how to solve this, I’d be very grateful. I learned how to access files and other simple stuff but not much more.

I am using nginx on ubuntu. With the html files my website works fine, but I need it .php to run something.

Janusz Szeligowski · Accepted Answer

Hi @karpred ,I had to start new answer again :DThanks for the latest result, and please provide one couple more. So, it will be two files: get_me_and_remove_me_2 and get_me_and_remove_me_3 1. For sudoer : sudo grep -e server_name -e root -e index -e include /etc/nginx/sites-available/* > ~/get_me_and_remove_me_2 && sudo cp /home/$USER/get_me_and_remove_me_2 /var/www/ For root : grep -e server_name -e root -e index -e include /etc/nginx/sites-available/* > /var/www/get_me_and_remove_me_2 2 . For sudoer : sudo ls -la /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ > ~/get_me_and_remove_me_3 && sudo cp /home/$USER/get_me_and_remove_me_3 /var/www/ For root : sudo ls -la /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ > /var/www/get_me_and_remove_me_3

KFSys · Answer

Hello @karpred , You need to check 2 or 3 things In your domain’s Nginx configuration file. The first is your root or referred to as DocumentRoot directive. In your case it’s /var/www/html but are you sure that’s where your files are located? Enter that directory and see if the files are there or located in another folder named after your domain. If it’s the second option just add the domain in your root directive : root /var/www/html to be root /var/www/html/domain.com That’s only if the files are in the said folder. The next thing to change would be the server_name server_name _; You should change it to include your domain server_name domain.com www.domain.com; After you make those changes, restart nginx and see if your website works properly now. Regards,KFSys

Janusz Szeligowski · Answer

Hi, Try the following steps. 1 . Restart nginx service sudo systemctl restart nginx 2 . Run the command curl http://your_droplet_ip/ 3 . In your Internet browser’s address bar enter: http://your_droplet_ip/index.php 4 . Clear Internet browser’s cache. If it is still unsuccessfully, give us a results of step 2 and 3.

Become a contributor for community

DigitalOcean Documentation

Resources for startups and AI-native businesses

The developer cloud

Start building today

Report this

403 Forbidden when changing index.html to index.php

Related questions

How can I improve the speed of an e-commerce website?

How to optimize Nginx reverse proxy caching for media streaming apps?

How to configure Nginx reverse proxy on Ubuntu

How to fix in nginx security config

How to change existing certbot/nginx to wildcard domain?

How do I get Ruby with Hanami to serve dynamic files via Falcon?

Unable to access the URL after deploying Discourse

AstroJS project hosted on DigitalOcean droplet with Nginx – CSS loading as text/html

Setting up a reverse proxy on DigitalOcean App Platform to route main domain and subdomains

using shiny-server with nginx

Django/Nginx/Gunicorn "unknown errors" in nginx logs

Problem running multiple workers with gunicorn/nginx to deploy python/flask web app

Report this

403 Forbidden when changing index.html to index.php

Related questions

How can I improve the speed of an e-commerce website?

How to optimize Nginx reverse proxy caching for media streaming apps?

How to configure Nginx reverse proxy on Ubuntu

How to fix in nginx security config

How to change existing certbot/nginx to wildcard domain?

How do I get Ruby with Hanami to serve dynamic files via Falcon?

Unable to access the URL after deploying Discourse

AstroJS project hosted on DigitalOcean droplet with Nginx – CSS loading as text/html

Setting up a reverse proxy on DigitalOcean App Platform to route main domain and subdomains

using shiny-server with nginx

Django/Nginx/Gunicorn "unknown errors" in nginx logs

Problem running multiple workers with gunicorn/nginx to deploy python/flask web app