Store Moved to New Server, No Access, 403 forbidden.

[MTUser2012]

I purchased a small oscommerce store to learn about how it works and to see if it is for me, but I am stuck on moving it. I followed the instructions that I found, paying close attention to configure.php in both includes and admin, but all I get is the 403 error. If I rename .htaccess to htaccess-old, the home page comes up but it looks horrible and none of the links work, and it has no images even though the path to the image folder is correct.

 

The site is running OSC 2.3 and my VPS runs PHP 5.3.3.

 

I'd appreciate any advice. Also, I'd like to ask is within the rules to solicit compensated help from members here to fix these types of problems?

[Guest]

@@MTUser2012

 

It sounds like the store has SEO URL's installed. The .htaccess file will contain a rewritebase / line, ensure this is pointed to your store directory. So, if your store is in the /catalog directory then the line would look like this:

 

rewritebase /catalog/

 

 

Also, you should delete all cache entries from the database table cache (if any exist)

 

 

 

 

Chris

[MTUser2012]

Thank you for the suggestions. I poked around the site, googled and found a post about permissions. It turns out the previous owner had set very restrictive permissions on everything. All the folders where below 755 and the .htaccess file was 604. On my VPS, by trial and error, I found that 664 is required for .htaccess so that it does not give the 403 error. I reset all the folders to 755 and the now the site works. But it isn't quite formatted like the original.

 

 

@@MTUser2012

 

It sounds like the store has SEO URL's installed. The .htaccess file will contain a rewritebase / line, ensure this is pointed to your store directory. So, if your store is in the /catalog directory then the line would look like this:

 

rewritebase /catalog/

 

 

Also, you should delete all cache entries from the database table cache (if any exist)

 

 

 

 

Chris

[Guest]

@@MTUser2012

 

Actually,

 

705 for directories and 604 for files is normal. Except for the two configure.php files which should be 444.

 

 

 

 

Chris

[MrPhil]

It depends on how your hosting is configured. 705/604 doesn't work on all systems. 755/644 is usually safe, but there could be hosts where it isn't allowed. You have to talk with your host to see what they consider "normal" permissions. Also, different directories may have different permissions -- my public_html/ is 750 but everything under it is normally 755.