Confused about 403 Forbidden Errors

July 30, 2007

I’m confused on how to best handle/control/correct 403 Forbidden Errors.

In my case, I installed a 3rd party support ticketing system into its own directory on my server. The path is http://www.example.com/support/

If I type this path into the browser, I receive the 403 Error. If I type the complete path, including the index.htm, then it works and I can access the support system.

I don’t have a problem typing in the complete path; but, there is a contact form that we added to our general site that communicates with this support system, and the form isn’t working because of this 403 Error.

We do have a .htaccess file and in it we do specify:

Options -MultiViews

I had read somewhere to have this line in .htaccess for security purposes.

1. Should I be able to simply enter www.mydomain.com/support/ and access the system without having to specify the index.htm at the end? And, if so, what do I do to enable that?

2. Should I remove the “Options -MultiViews” from .htaccess?

3. Is there any security issue with doing this?

4. Is there anything else I should add to .htaccess to handle the 403 errors?

Thanks very much for your input.

Ron