403 error when editing profiles

[TGPAccount]

Hey guys,

I upgraded our forum a while back from 3.4.5 to 4.3.5.  Everything seemed fine for the most part, but any time a profile gets edited by someone that isn't just a regular member they get the following error:

"Forbidden You don't have permission to access /forums/index.php on this server. Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

From what I can tell there isn't a permission difference between the member groups that should cause it, and we've got a barebones version of 4.3.5 set up as a test installation that things seem to work fine on, so I'm sort of at a loss as to what the issue is.

Any help or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

[AndyF]

I was going to suggest a mod_sec issue and/or a .htacces related one however if some groups can access without issue and some cannot then it seems quite unlikely to be either of those (not impossible, just unlikely) as those issues tend to be all or nothing usually.

First quick and easy things to check, consider upping to perhaps 436 (latest 43x release) if you did not yet feel ready to go to 44x, php7,1 needed for 44x) : Release specifics can be found here if curious. 🙂

Back to the issue in hand:

If you're using a custom theme on the site with issues, temporarily switch to the default to see if it persists. Same with custom language packs, although its not that likely either of these would cause that type of error it will only take 30 seconds to rule them out.

I don't think its a browser issue however you could if its practical try another browser but I'd be most surprised if it was this.

Assuming that's OK, temporarily disable any third party additions you have on the site with issues to see if one of these is causing it, anything that interacts with anything member related (profile or not) would be worth turning off for a few minutes if possible. Ideally you want to temporarily turn everything 'third party' off for a few moments to check. If it then behaves re-enable each item in turn to find the likely culprit. 🙂

[TGPAccount]

Started going down the list.  Did some upgrades, checked some things, issue remained.  Then I removed a profile field to see if maybe that was it.  It was.  Everything works now.

Thanks for the help.

[AndyF]

6 hours ago, TGPAccount said:

Started going down the list.  Did some upgrades, checked some things, issue remained.  Then I removed a profile field to see if maybe that was it.  It was.  Everything works now.

That's great to know you've discovered and rectified the cause. I'm going to assume there was something invalid in the input type entry for that field although it was quite an odd error to get for such a thing. :)

6 hours ago, TGPAccount said:

Thanks for the help.

You're welcome! 😀