Urgent help needed - server not loading index.php unless typed in directly

i get the following message when i click home on my live site

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /odinsminiatureshop/ on this server.

the web browser displays
http://www.odinsminiatures.com/odinsminiatureshop/

and it should have index.php at the end

Can someone help me out and tell me what file i need to edit and where to add index.php please.
As customers cannot return to my homepage without pressing back they just get forbidden message.:cry:

thanks

michelle

Your site's acting as though there's another index file in your root directory which is interfering with the index.php

Check your odinsminiatures.com/odinsminiatureshop/ folder for any other files called index.htm or index.html or index.xxx There should only be one index file in there.

firstly thankyou for helping me.

Ok i looked in the file you said
and in the odinsminiatureshop file there was no index.html at all, but i found one in each if the folowing folders

editors
email
extras
images
media
includes
includes/loaders
includes/cartactions
public
downloads
docs

should these be there or should i delete them all.

Michelle:shocking:

michelleodin:

Can someone help me out and tell me what file i need to edit and where to add index.php please.
As customers cannot return to my homepage without pressing back they just get forbidden message.:cry:
It looks like your site is not set to automatically load the index.php file if a directory index is requested. Probably the simplest thing to do is to raise a support ticket with your hosting company and ask them to set index.php to auto load on directory index.

Regards,
Christian.

michelleodin:

should these be there or should i delete them all.
They should all be there.

Regards,
Christian.

Thank you for replying, the page was working ok so i think the permissions are set ok with my provider, but im just a learner at this stuff so im just trying a restore from a backup i made in December hopefully that will work.
If not i might have to do the site again from scratch, as its so annoying when a visitor to the site cannot navigate ok.

Regards
Michelle
:unsure:

The file reads odinsminiatureshop/

but it should say odinsminiatureshop/index.php
the index.php is missing from the end
i just wondered what file i would need to alter and how to do it.

The page loaded ok before but i cant remember if it stopped working after doing some mods on the site.

michelle:wacko:

As CJPinder said, you need to raise a ticket with your hosting company because your site is not automatically finding the index.php file like it's supposed to.
They'll have to adjust your server's apache configuration to look for index.php as the default document if none is specified on the URL.

While you could do it with .htaccess changes yourself, it sounds like you should really be having your hosting company look after server-related things for you.

Ok thank you so much i will raise this with my host now.

:D

Regards

Michelle

my host reccomended i remove .htaccess so i did and it worked is this a safe thing to do or is my site at risk of being hacked.

regards

michelle
:clap:

michelleodin:

my host reccomended i remove .htaccess so i did and it worked is this a safe thing to do or is my site at risk of being hacked.
A clean installation of Zen Cart doesn't have a .htaccess file in the root (i.e. same directory as the index.php file) so removing it won't affect your security.

As to how the .htaccess file got there and why it was causing a problem is another story. If you still have a copy of it could you post its content here.

Regards,
Christian.

hmmm - I agree with Christian ... best to figure out what's in the old .htaccess, as it sounds like it was tampered with.