By the way, my host (in Australia) logged in as me and there was no problem.
I logged in on my wife’s laptop, here in a hotel in Mexico, and exactly the same thing happened as on mine – a 403 error.
I know you guys don’t think it’s an IP issue but it does seem to be geographically sensitive
if you have access to your db via phpmyadmin or other, we can give you the values to enter into the db for the wp user meta to grant user sp admin caps…
simple press is NOT IP or geographic sensitive… we dont care or use either… but if you really think that is the case, it would be on your server, not in simple press… maybe those security plugins your run are checking IP regions and blocking access??
I am now in Atlanta, Georgia, en route for Virginia, and the same thing is happening, so my brilliant theory about it being IP related is not holding water.
I plan to spend a couple of hours once I get to Richmond suspending plug-ins to see if that is where the conflicts are arising
OK, I am now in Richmond, Va, and everything seems to be working again. My host has not told me that they have tweaked anything so it’s back to the security software and the possibility that they are blocking a range of IP addresses and I was caught in the net.
Anyway, thank-you all for your help and I guess the message is, if you are going to travel, make sure it’s not to a place from which you have blocked IP addresses.
I will come back with a definitive answer when I have one.
OK, I hesitate to write this in case I jinx myself, but the Hosting service advice people finally had a look at my .htaccess file and said it was cluttered with all sorts of exclusions. I can only guess that various security plugins that I have tried and then replaced with something else have left traces.
So they replaced the .htaccess file with the default WordPress one, bumped my service capacity up by 50 percent (for a modest $5 a month) and recommended I go on to Cloudflare as a cache-ing and security measure.
The .htaccess thing fixed the initial problem immediately and (fingers crossed) everything seems to be running very smoothly. Traffic to my website has gone up substantially – I assume as a result of at least one of the above – and I am happy.
If only my broadband provider hadn’t accidentally redirected my service and phone lines to the flat next door, and is now unable to get it back, everything would be hunky-dory.
Anyway, I know you guys try to offer help but often hear nothing after the problem is solved – there must be a name for that phenomenon – so I thought I would let you know.
Thanks for your support and advice
JimmyT
You’re absolutely right of course – so many threads get left dangling so your conclusion is very welcome.
I know it is mean of me to laugh but cabling your neighbour does have it’s amusing side. No doubt one day you will be able to laugh as well. I do hope they sort it out good and quick…
It’s OK, it’s hilarious. It would just be a lot funnier if it was happening to someone else.