I raised the permissions error with my ISP and this is their reply:

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Hi Bill,

From what I can tell, it may be an issue with the index file itself which is not necessarily something I can help with. We are getting an error when the 403 shows up that states:

[Sat Apr 06 10:29:13 2019] [error] [client 80.82.127.194] Directory index forbidden by Options directive: /var/www/vhosts/nineoaks-fisheries.co.uk/httpdocs/piwigo/, referer: https://www.nineoaks-fisheries.co.uk/piwigo/index.php?

If I then add this line into the htaccess file (usually helps with the above error): Options +Indexes, the error does go away and it does indeed load, however it just shows me a list of files instead of anything useful really. Not sure if you want to try it yourself, just the case of throwing that line in the htaccess.

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Continuing with my further input.
On scanning through many queries there does appear to be numerous errors that relate to permissions. As this issue would also appear to be related to file permissions, it does raise the question "what should the permissions be?"
Having a list of permissions would help many people and WE can then check or change them for ourselves. Having such a list would be of tremendous help to many.

Can we have such a list, please?

Hi :-)

add on local config

$conf['random_index_redirect'] = array('./index.php?/categories' => '');

Hello;

In order to overcome the current problem, crashing when the "Home" tab is clicked on. This problem also occurs on other "Home" type buttons too.

I would like to re-install Piwigo (already running latest version 2.9.4) without making any changes to the current set-up, database, etc. with the latest version to overwrite the existing files. Is this possible and how would I go about it?

Thanks in advance.
Buddhabaker

Hello executive;
I have uploaded from my pc and overwritten all of the existing piwigo directories.
I've closed everything then re-booted my pc.
I've re-started Chrome
I went to the piwigo directory and entered install.php
The system returns the message "Piwigo is already installed"

I enter index.php and fire-up piwigo.

I click through the categories and albums and everything appears ok until I click on "home" when I receive the 403 Permissions Error.

Incidentally, i.php has permissions set to 777, I've tried the above with these permissions with the same result, I've also repeated these again with i.php having 755 and then again with 644 permissions. Each time clicking "Home" crashes with a 403 error.

I'm desperate to go "live" but can not until this is resolved.

Make sure that your /etc/apache2/httpd.conf (or whatever Apache config file is reponsible for your domain) includes index.php in its DirectoryIndex directive. For example

DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php default.html default.htm

If that's not the case and Options +Indexes in the .htaccess file makes the error go away but then gives a listing of files in the directory instead then you have a clueless hosting provider.

Btw, Piwigo does not crash there. It is simply the web server configuration does not allow an access to the directory listing (which is good) and also does not fall back to one of the available files, namely index.php (which is bad), and hence gives the 403 "access forbidden" status. The same happens if you simply surf to https://www.nineoaks-fisheries.co.uk/piwigo/ (which is nothing different from the "Home button" as you call it).

Usually it is not necessary (or even harmful as you experienced..) to override DirectoryIndex in a .htaccess file of any directory if you don't want to restrict or change the order in which files are tried when just a directory is specified in the URL, or want to explicitly state exactly which one file is to be used.
However, great you sorted that out.