I have purchased a new site at DP and tried to host it at my godaddy. I installed the files then the site gave HTTP 403 error. I sent a support e-mail to godaddy. They have replied to me as below: Dear Sir/Madame, Thank you for contacting Hosting Support. The issue has been addressed and has been diagnosed. Resetting the permissions for the directory in question then renamed the .htaccess file to "old.htaccess" You will need to troubleshoot the content of the .htaccess file and rename it back to ".htaccess". If you continue to experience any similar problems after today please let us know. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter. Please let us know if we can assist you in any other way. Sincerely, Advanced Hosting Support I didn't understand that "You will need to troubleshoot the content of the .htaccess file and rename it back to ".htaccess"." What does it mean? What am I required to do? I have found that file and open with notepad. But I don't know what will I do with old.htaccess. Any idea?
You need to look at the file .htaccess , and see what it says. Normally, you can do with just an empty file, or none at all, unless you are using complex permissions etc. To be honest, don't worry about it; it's not really important if you don't know how .htaccess works. As long as your site now works, ignore it.
Yes I don't know how the files work, including ".htacces". Do you advise me to delete old.htaccess file? 3 sites are hosted at the same account. I hope that i don't face with additional problems by deleting the file.
Yeah, just delete it. It's not a big problem, unless you know what you are doing with it, .htaccess is a waste of time
Wow. You can't just delete an htaccess file & assume everything will be peachy keen, that's insane. Look for rewrites, aliases, & stuff that works with locations. You might have somthing that's not supposed to be seen by the public, but the new server interprets an address different than the old server which could cause a 403 forbidden error for the wrong location.
We're talking about Godaddy basic hosting and someone who doesn't know how to use .htaccess, and it's already not present on the server for http to find, it's been renamed, and it fixed the problem, so it'll be fine. If it was someone knowing how to use .htaccess, i'd have different advice. lol.
I have deleted the file then insert the same file into the server. I didn't make any change on the file. The problem was solved completely. Site have been up since yesterday. I didn't make any change on the file. Interesting solution for an interesting problem.. I haven't checked my other hosted sites which may use that file. I hope there is no problem with them.
htaccess files are server configuration files, outright deletion of them is like deleting an ini file on a Windows computer. You got lucky this time.
One of my sites doesn't work properly when I delete .htaccess. It should be modified. If anyone can help me it will be so appreciated. I am willing to pay some if the problem solved.