HI GH, thanks for bringing this to my attention. I haven't gotten any other similar reports (yet), and 403 is a client-side error, usually indicating something on your end rather than on the server, but I've got a couple ideas. It's definitely not a PC/Apple thing, I'm writing this in Chrome on a MacBook Pro.

First, it'd be helpful to know what the last thing you were browsing was before the error hit to establish any patterns, like is it always the Old Forums Archives, does it happen when viewing/posting here, or when just browsing the main HOS site?

Do you know how to clear a browser's cache and delete cookies? 403 does pop up when cookies get old and corrupted, and that's the first thing I would do if I ran into this error. The exact steps vary from browser to browser but a quick google "how to clear cache and delete in cookies in [browser name]" should get you there pretty quick.

I've also been doing some maintenance/housekeeping on the server recently so if it is coming from our end it may clear up as a matter of course. Could you go ahead and clear cookies/cache in your browsers and see if this is still happening? Note: if your dumping individual cookies rather than all, there are two domains to clear (forums.homeorchardsociety.org and homeorchardsociety.org).

Sorry you're having trouble but we'll get to the bottom of it.

Glad you at least have a workaround to be able to reliably get back in, even if it is a bit of a pain. Can't be sure what's going on with those old forums but at least it's isolated to that. There's a lot of reasons we moved away from that platform; I just wanted to keep all those posts up for posterity. It could be that it actually happens to everyone and you're just the only one browsing those recently to encounter it.

Kudos on your excellent internet hygiene, BTW 

I am able to login and navigate these newer forums after seeing the 403 error as evidenced by this post. Now I am afraid to go back and do more testing. My error using my android cellphone / chrome surfing was cured by powering down and back again. Where as earlier today at the public library I had been using chrome and internet explorer and each had the same effected lock with same 403 error and rebooting any machine was not a cure.

What we need is for somebody like Jesse with the proper access to email me all the path information of the many print friendly versions of pages, because thay are not so heavily monitored by the php system part of the server. When or if I get them I can probably think of a way to "tool" the resulting html through keyboard macros or something similar, and post then onto a 3rd read-only topic.

I would do it to eliminate the old forums that would be a future problem to anyone or any browser.