One of the trickiest things I ever had to do on my old phpbb2 forum was getting these SEO/rewrite mods to work. In fact, they were the only mods of probably 30 or so that I eventually had to give up and hire someone to make work for me. So you can imagine how excited I was to find that there is a premodded version now that I'm completely starting over with phpbb3.

Yet here we are, I haven't even got the site up and running, and I'm already running into trouble. After follow the directions to the letter, I wind up with a sitewide 403 error the minute I put my .htaccess file in place.

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    # Lines That should already be in your .htacess
    <Files "config.php">
    Order Allow,Deny
    Deny from All
    </Files>
    <Files "common.php">
    Order Allow,Deny
    Deny from All
    </Files>

    # You may need to un-comment the following lines
    # Options +FollowSymlinks
    # To make sure that rewritten dir or file (/|.html) will not load dir.php in case it exist
    # Options -MultiViews
    # REMEBER YOU ONLY NEED TO STARD MOD REWRITE ONCE
    RewriteEngine On
    # Uncomment the statement below if you want to make use of
    # HTTP authentication and it does not already work.
    # This could be required if you are for example using PHP via Apache CGI.
    # RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},L]
    # REWRITE BASE
    RewriteBase /forum/
    # HERE IS A GOOD PLACE TO FORCE CANONICAL DOMAIN
    # RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.nameofmysite\.com$ [NC]
    # RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.nameofmysite.com/forum/$1 [QSA,L,R=301]

    # DO NOT GO FURTHER IF THE REQUESTED FILE / DIR DOES EXISTS
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
    RewriteRule . - [L]
    #####################################################
    # PHPBB SEO REWRITE RULES ALL MODES
    #####################################################
    # AUTHOR : dcz www.phpbb-seo.com
    # STARTED : 01/2006
    #################################
    # FORUMS PAGES
    ###############
    # FORUM INDEX REWRITERULE WOULD STAND HERE IF USED. "forum" REQUIRES TO BE SET AS FORUM INDEX
    # RewriteRule ^forum\.html$ index.php [QSA,L,NC]
    # FORUM ALL MODES
    RewriteRule ^(forum|[a-z0-9_-]*-f)([0-9]+)(-([0-9]+))?\.html$ viewforum.php?f=$2&start=$4 [QSA,L,NC]
    # TOPIC WITH VIRTUAL FOLDER ALL MODES
    RewriteRule ^(forum|[a-z0-9_-]*-f)([0-9]+)/(topic|[a-z0-9_-]*-t)([0-9]+)(-([0-9]+))?\.html$ viewtopic.php?f=$2&t=$4&start=$6 [QSA,L,NC]
    # GLOBAL ANNOUNCES WITH VIRTUAL FOLDER ALL MODES
    RewriteRule ^announces/(topic|[a-z0-9_-]*-t)([0-9]+)(-([0-9]+))?\.html$ viewtopic.php?t=$2&start=$4 [QSA,L,NC]
    # TOPIC WITHOUT FORUM ID & DELIM ALL MODES
    RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_-]*)/?(topic|[a-z0-9_-]*-t)([0-9]+)(-([0-9]+))?\.html$ viewtopic.php?forum_uri=$1&t=$3&start=$5 [QSA,L,NC]
    # PHPBB FILES ALL MODES
    RewriteRule ^resources/[a-z0-9_-]+/(thumb/)?([0-9]+)$ download/file.php?id=$2&t=$1 [QSA,L,NC]
    # PROFILES THROUGH USERNAME
    RewriteRule ^member/([^/]+)/?$ memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&un=$1 [QSA,L,NC]
    # USER MESSAGES THROUGH USERNAME
    RewriteRule ^member/([^/]+)/(topics|posts)/?(page([0-9]+)\.html)?$ search.php?author=$1&sr=$2&start=$4 [QSA,L,NC]
    # GROUPS ALL MODES
    RewriteRule ^(group|[a-z0-9_-]*-g)([0-9]+)(-([0-9]+))?\.html$ memberlist.php?mode=group&g=$2&start=$4 [QSA,L,NC]
    # POST
    RewriteRule ^post([0-9]+)\.html$ viewtopic.php?p=$1 [QSA,L,NC]
    # ACTIVE TOPICS
    RewriteRule ^active-topics(-([0-9]+))?\.html$ search.php?search_id=active_topics&start=$2&sr=topics [QSA,L,NC]
    # UNANSWERED TOPICS
    RewriteRule ^unanswered(-([0-9]+))?\.html$ search.php?search_id=unanswered&start=$2&sr=topics [QSA,L,NC]
    # NEW POSTS
    RewriteRule ^newposts(-([0-9]+))?\.html$ search.php?search_id=newposts&start=$2&sr=topics [QSA,L,NC]
    # UNREAD POSTS
    RewriteRule ^unreadposts(-([0-9]+))?\.html$ search.php?search_id=unreadposts&start=$2 [QSA,L,NC]
    # THE TEAM
    RewriteRule ^the-team\.html$ memberlist.php?mode=leaders [QSA,L,NC]
    # HERE IS A GOOD PLACE TO ADD OTHER PHPBB RELATED REWRITERULES

    # FORUM WITHOUT ID & DELIM ALL MODES (SAME DELIM)
    # THESE FOUR LINES MUST BE LOCATED AT THE END OF YOUR HTACCESS TO WORK PROPERLY
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_-]+)(-([0-9]+))\.html$ viewforum.php?forum_uri=$1&start=$3 [QSA,L,NC]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_-]+)\.html$ viewforum.php?forum_uri=$1 [QSA,L,NC]
    # FIX RELATIVE PATHS : FILES
    RewriteRule ^.+/(style\.php|ucp\.php|mcp\.php|faq\.php|download/file.php)$ $1 [QSA,L,NC,R=301]
    # FIX RELATIVE PATHS : IMAGES
    RewriteRule ^.+/(styles/.*|images/.*)/$ $1 [QSA,L,NC,R=301]
    # END PHPBB PAGES
    #####################################################

Note that I selected the checkbox to install .htaccess in the forum folder rather than the root.

If anyone could help me here, I'd be most grateful...

Can someone help me please?

mmm. Stange. A 403 suggest that this is dealing with auth, so you may want to activate this RewriteRule, by replacing:

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# Uncomment the statement below if you want to make use of
# HTTP authentication and it does not already work.
# This could be required if you are for example using PHP via Apache CGI.
# RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},L]

with :

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# Uncomment the statement below if you want to make use of
# HTTP authentication and it does not already work.
# This could be required if you are for example using PHP via Apache CGI.
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},L]

Other than that, if you indeed placed the .htaccess where the red message of the .htaccess generator told you to, then, it might be a slash matter, but in both cases, it does not really relate well to a 403.