Comments on: Errors with .htaccess : Site Down with 403 Forbidden Errors

By: Michael Brode

Michael Brode — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:13:47 +0000

Hello friend,

You can visible hidden files (.htaccess) in FileZilla 3 as follows:
– You go under the menu item “Server” and activate “list hidden files force”
– The following dialog close simply by klick OK. Done.

Greeting

By: MPLS

MPLS — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 04:36:59 +0000

I had a similar problem. I was doing some testing and have installed PHP 5 on a development server. I had a site installed on the server that was working correctly, complete with quite an elaborate .htaccess file handling many redirects and rules. However, after installing PHP5 it turns out any php file I tried to view just returned a 403 Forbidden error. I began to scratch my head. Searching on Google didn’t immediately bring up a solution either. However, I eventually narrowed it down to the fact that I needed to add Options +FollowSymLinks to my .htaccess file. That solved it all.

By: Matt Van Dusen

Matt Van Dusen — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:09:23 +0000

In my experience with Dreamhost, they do mean well, and usually fix it right the first time - but this shows that yes, they are human. They can make mistakes, However, they will tell you when they do something, they don’t beat around the bush, and if something requires action from you (that they can’t just control themselves from the support center), they will give you step-by-step direction on the matter, whether it is upgrading your webapps (a clear-cut case of “staying on top of things”) or telling Google that they don’t need to make 50,000 hits every hour (a clear-cut case of “our servers can handle it…. can yours?”).

Granted, Google pretty much IS the internets these days, but even they can be blocked with very little effort.

By: GroundFloorSEO.com | Top SEO Blogs & Bloggers » Dreamhost asking clients to block GoogleBot

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 03:45:19 +0000

[...] are already complaining about Dreamhost asking clients to block search engine spiders. A post in QuickOnlineTips confirms this [...]

By: Mr. Nosuch

Mr. Nosuch — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:31:41 +0000

Thanks for posting this. It helped me figure out why our forums page rank went to 0. It killed our ad revenues and search results.

I’m really pissed that Dreamhost would do this without contacting me. They have a fine contact/support system, yet when they decided to make huge changes like this, they don’t let me know?

Really, really annoying.

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 24 May 2007 05:08:42 +0000

Blocking Googlebot goes too far. For people who make a living from search engines it is unacceptable.

By: Dreamhost asking clients to block GoogleBot

Dreamhost asking clients to block GoogleBot — Fri, 18 May 2007 06:03:41 +0000

[...] are already complaining about Dreamhost asking clients to block search engine spiders. A post in QuickOnlineTips confirms this [...]

By: Jack

Jack — Fri, 04 May 2007 16:27:07 +0000

I use Dreamhost as well. They disabled two of my sites at different times because they said I configured my .htaccess file incorrectly, causing it to hit the server over and over again. In actuality, it was googlebot spidering my site of 20,000 pages. Seriously, they can’t handle googlebot? To solve the problem I went into Google Webmaster Tools and slowed down the crawl rate for spidering my site.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:23:15 +0000

You have this site on a shared hosting plan over DreamHost?

I am a client of them as well, but I only host smaller sites there. Not reliable at all from my past experiences.

By: Ed

Ed — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 01:37:37 +0000

but I can’t remember to close my html tags apparently… hehe

By: Ed

Ed — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 01:36:01 +0000

Another alternative would have been to SSH into your dreamhost server and edit the htaccess directly on the server. I always keep a copy of putty on my thumbdrive for such occasions.