Joomla! Discussion Forums

In the last couple of months I am seeing a lot of this, which never occurred before: frontend editing saves are rejected with a message 'Forbidden Access (flooding)' - or 'Forbidden Access (tag in POST)'. This is with J 1.0.12 and 1.0.13 versions.

This is either (a) a Joomla built-in security block being triggered, or (b) more likely a server setting perhaps. I'm seeing it especially on Apache 1.1.3x / Unix servers. Is this a too-tight default server setting on these servers?

If you Save an edit with a few words of plain text, it seems to be OK; but a fair-sized page with plenty of mixed content gets blocked - probably because of the number of HTTP requests at one time?

Of course, it means that frontend editing is impossible, which makes any kind of community use out of the question. Does anyone know if this is:
a) a Joomla issue;
b) a server setting?

More likely (b) I guess - so what should the minimum HTTP requests per time be set to, to allow frontend edits? And what about the 'tag in POST' error?

Sounds to me like you have the security features of SH404SEF turned on??

You are quite right Sir!

Thanks for that.

[it's always an extension issue, isn't it - should have thought of that...]

I am having this problem as well so I tried to turn off sef security but everytime I save it turns back on. The configuration is writeable but its just not updating.

Maybe try editing the file manually by FTP?

I have searched through the Sef config but just cannot find the line where I can turn it off manually. I am looking at sh404sef.php
is this the correct file to change security options in?

I've discovered on my setup that it is sh404sef that is causing the problem. Is there a fix for this that anyone has found?

I am not sure, but I got the same problem.

After installed sh404sef, I can not edit any article at my fontend any more. I just got "Forbidden access".

I think there is something wrong with security function of sh404sef or I did not config properly.

I also got the same problem with editing front page and if someone lost their password .
I fixed this in this steps .
1 sh404SEF Control Panel / security
2 Anti-flood configuration
- Activate anti-flood : yes
- Only if POST data (forms) : NO ( this is your problem editing front page )
Anti-flood control : 50
Max number of requests : 50

And now i have no problem , hope this will help you guys .
Sorry for my bad english :P

I am running J1.5.8 on PHP 5.2.5 with SH404SEF 1.0.11 and yes I have the anti-flooding security turned on and set to 50 sec for anti-flooding control. I started getting the Forbidden access page when trying to access XMap from the front end, but despite my trying to use the suggests in this forum have not had any positive results that have corrected this issue. Help!

The Wine Nut

Anti-flood control 200
Max number of requests 100

Thanks all for the advice in this thread. I was getting forbidden Access so I set to 200 and 100 as suggested by dhuelsmann but now I am getting:

Redirect Loop
Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

Any ideas?

I got the same problem and when i put path in
var $live_site in configuration.php my problems
are gone.

var $live_site = 'http://www.mysite.com';

I was getting this problem too and I fixed it by going to:
sh404SEF component->Advanced Tab
Changing the Home page URL from http://www.mysite.com to <blank>
(ie. deleting the previous entry)

Of note is that I still have the security feature on and it works great!

I was getting the same "Forbidden Access Error" on https://www.surefirehire.com when I implemented sh404sef

1) I went to sh404sef Component > Security
2) Check also forms data (POST) to "No"

The overlib states that this might be an issue; furthermore, it states to turn it off, if it is an issue.

Same problem here, which I think is compounded by server permission issues. When I try to make any changes to the sef404 configuration, I get "You don't have permission to access /administrator/index.php on this server."

When I make changes directly in the config file, it breaks the site.

We just went live with the site, but the sysadmin took the whole joomla site out of a subdirectory and copied into the root html folder. Now, I'm afraid to uninstall sef404 to narrow down the source of the problem.

Insights are most appreciated.

Just for the record for anyone doing a new install in case they come across the same problem:

My install:
Joomla 1.5.12
Default .htaccess rewrites
Enabled sh404SEF 1.0.20_Beta Basic Configuration

Result: Home page showed OK, all other pages displayed a 404 page with no CSS formatting, hit a refresh and got a Forbidden Access (Flooding) page.

Solution: Click on the sh404SEF option to show the Extended parameters, back in the configuration>security tab I ran through all permutations of the previous posts, those that mattered to my setup:

Check also forms data (POST) = No
Activate anti-flood = No
Only if POST data (forms) = No
Anti-flood control = 100
Max number of requests =100

Note that setting the anti-flood control and max no. of requests to less than 100 still resulted in the Forbidden Access (flooding) errors.

All now working OK; Cheers to all the previous posters,

mr_b

I was having this problem and found it was because I hadn't purged the SEF URLs.

Once you've entered in Custom Redirects you need to click 'Purge SEF URLs' or you'll keep getting this error.

When I did this, all the errors disappeared instantly.